


Tie Your Monster Down

by stereomer



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-23
Updated: 2012-03-23
Packaged: 2017-11-02 09:36:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereomer/pseuds/stereomer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A spy AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tie Your Monster Down

**PROLOGUE**  
  
February 18 2003  
0345  
New Jersey, USA  
  
  
“Okay, so I think you bust out the paneling,” Gerard narrates to himself as he feels around under the steering wheel, prying his fingers into whatever gaps he can find. It actually pops off neatly into his hands, which is really surprising.   
  
“Right. Now what?” Frank has his arms crossed over his chest for warmth and is leaning into the car a little bit. Meanwhile, Mikey’s texting someone in the passenger seat, oblivious to the sprinkles of glass that are still littered under his feet.   
  
Gerard places the panel on the floor of Mikey’s side and trails off. “You…”  
  
“You want to look for the two thickest wires,” Frank says patiently.   
  
“How are you supposed to look for them?” Gerard slides off the seat, crowding his feet up against the pedals, and tries to fit his head under to see what he’s doing, but all he gets is a really close-up view of the wheel.   
  
“Yeah, Frank. Not all of us can fit into cupboards or whatever,” says Mikey.   
  
“Shut the fuck up. Okay, so feel around for the thickest wires if you can’t fit underneath.” Frank leans in a little more, then squats down so that he has the same point of view as Gerard.   
  
“Uh.” Gerard fumbles around but everything feels the same to his slightly numb fingertips. There’s a scrape of gravel as Frank gets on his hands and knees for a second to peer up into the mess of wiring before squatting again. He reaches in and takes Gerard’s hands, guiding them until he’s holding a wire in each one.   
  
“Okay, feel that?” Frank presses Gerard’s thumb and index finger together.  
  
Their hands are spooning, Gerard thinks dumbly. He’s only known Frank for one night and he’s already discovering just how tactile the guy can get. Frank’s fingers are just as cold as Gerard’s, but they move with purpose and –   
  
Frank presses again. “Gerard. Dude. You feel that, right?”  
  
“Yeah.” He can feel it, actually. The plastic coating is thicker than the others. He rubs them as if to show Frank that yeah, he gets it.   
  
“Good. So, what you want to do next is to peel the insulation off. If you have wirecutters, it’ll be easier on your fingers, but we don’t right now, so just pull until they break.”  
  
“That seems kind of reckless.”  
  
“You’re stealing a car, you’re not doing a heart transplant,” Frank smiles. He lets go of Gerard’s hands and moves away. “Go for it.”  
  
Gerard tugs. Nothing happens. Mikey snaps his phone shut and mutters, “Oh my god.”  
  
“Fuck off, Mikey.” Gerard tugs again, and then yanks as hard as he can. His right hand flies backward, hitting the parking brake as a wire snaps. The other one is still in tact.   
  
“Halfway there,” Frank says encouragingly. Mikey mutters something again, and then it turns into an audible, “Oh, man,” as he straightens up in his seat, looking wildly at the rearview mirror.  
  
“Huh?” Gerard sticks his head out the open door and says, “Aw,  _shit,_ ” when he sees blue and red lights flashing around and around, like they’re at some fucking disco party.   
  
“Fuck, there’s another one up front, too,” Mikey groans.   
  
Frank scrambles up excitedly. “Move move move. Get out.”   
  
Gerard manages to crawl out onto the street as Frank immediately occupies the vacated space. He breaks the remaining wire with a single deft movement, then gets to work while cursing under his breath the entire time. All Gerard can see are tiny jerks of Frank’s forearms, the movements lit by the police lights as he works blindly.   
  
At once, the quiet of 2:00am explodes into chaos as the sirens turn on in a deafening wail. “We’re not actually going to try – ” Gerard starts uneasily.  
  
“Get in the car, Gerard!” Frank turns his head and shouts. Mikey’s yelling too, and there’s a shower of sparks as the car finally rumbles to life.   
  
Gerard’s in the backseat before Frank has even stopped talking. “I’m in, I’m in. Fuck!”  
  
“God, we are so screwed.” Frank sounds delighted. He pushes himself up onto the driver’s seat and pulls at the lever, dragging it up the tracks until his feet can reach the pedals.   
  
“Drive, please, motherfucker!” Gerard yells, craning his head to stare out the back window. His view lurches sideways as Frank pulls the car around in an impossibly tight turn, all screeching wheels and burning rubber.   
  
“It’s okay, I aced stunt driving!” Frank shouts over the noise. Except the semicircle he makes is entirely too wide and he promptly crashes the front headlight into an electrical pole. They all lurch forward and rebound against the back of their seats as the car becomes still once again.   
  
“Fuck,” Gerard sighs.  
  


*

  
All three of their heads turn in unison when the door squeaks open in a slow arc. It’s an exhausted noise compared to the bangs and slams of the police force, and the person walking in has a fittingly tired, pinched expression.    
  
“I’m Brian Schechter with Division,” he introduces himself. He looks sort of harassed and like he just crawled out of bed – he’s wearing slippers and only one sock.   
  
“Hi Brian,” Mikey greets.    
  
Brian silently sits down opposite of them. He folds his hands on the table and opens his mouth, but it’s another moment before he speaks. “I’m assuming you all work together?”   
  
“Nah, I’m a field agent. Just transferred in from Washington a couple days ago,” Frank says. “Gerard’s a desk jockey.”   
  
Mikey seems mildly surprised when Brian looks at him. “Uh. I work in, uh. The IT department.”   
  
Gerard scratches his upper lip to keep from laughing. The job descriptions were technically correct, but it was kind of like referring to a nuclear explosion as a small bonfire. It’s taking all he has not to slump over the table and just burst into giggles because seriously, he’s still a little drunk and this situation is ridiculous.    
  
“Right, well. You didn’t provide details when you called, but the precinct filled me in. Tell me if this is correct.”   
  
They blink attentively.    
  
“You got thrown out of a bar around 1:00am. You broke into a car parked a couple blocks away,” Brian lists.   
  
Frank rubs his nose. “Ostensibly.”    
  
“You then decided it might be a good idea to have a coaching session on hotwiring cars,” Brian continues.   
  
Frank looks up at the ceiling. “Theoretically.”   
  
“You got caught by the cops. You tried to escape the cops. Now you’re here,” Brian finishes.    
  
“Presumably,” Frank says.   
  
“Yes, that’s all correct in a loose sense,” Gerard says after a pause.    
  
“This might be a stupid question,” Brian sighs, “but why did you not tell them who you were?”   
  
“Who would have believed us?” Frank shrugs. “We left our wallets and keys at home just in case, so no one would have an excuse to drive anything if we got trashed.”   
  
“Beer money and cab money was all we had,” Mikey chimes in.   
  
Brian’s eye twitches. “Except you decided to pull grand theft auto, so I don’t really think it worked out well, do you?”    
  
“File F-2374,” Gerard answers abruptly.   
  
“What?”   
  
“File F-2374, the guy that Agent Bowers brought in three weeks ago? That was his car we broke in to. The agency was just going to get someone to impound and trash it anyway. And also,” Gerard adds, “that bar fight was more of a contained dispute, in my opinion.” More specifically, it had been Frank’s contained dispute. Mikey had been playing darts and Gerard had been in the bathroom, both of them oblivious to what was happening at the other end of the bar.    
  
“Witnesses said several people were hit in the head with pool cues,” Brian states.    
  
“Where did you find witnesses at this time of night?” Frank asks casually.    
  
Brian ignores him. “So basically, putting aside the bar fight, you thought you were doing us a favor by breaking into a car and getting arrested.” He puts his forehead down on the table and breathes in deep.    
  
Gerard glances sideways at Mikey and Frank. “Uh.”   
  
Brian’s breathing is starting to sound like a wind machine. “Here’s a secret, guys: it’s my first week on the job. When I got out of bed, I was thinking this was going to be more along the lines of talking you out of a speeding ticket.”   
  
“We’re sorry,” Mikey apologizes. He sounds sincere.    
  
“Let’s just go,” Brian replies without lifting his head. He gets up after another few seconds and the three of them follow. No one accosts them while they’re making their way to the exit, so Gerard guesses that Brian had already straightened everything out with the cops.    
  
A nondescript black van is parked right outside. Everyone piles in. “Thanks, Brian,” Gerard says as he shuts the passenger side door.    
  
Brian turns on the ignition and says, grimly, “Langley is going to fucking kick my ass.”   
  


*

 

> August 27, 2003  
>  0800  
>  New Jersey, USA
> 
>  
> 
> “What?” Gerard isn’t sure he heard right. 
> 
> “Team leader,” Brian repeats patiently. “You.”
> 
> “In the field?”
> 
> “In the field,” Brian confirms. 
> 
> “You want me to be a team leader in the field. As a field agent. Leading a team of other field agents,” Gerard recites, tilting his head to the side to show how incredibly stupid he thinks the idea is. 
> 
> Brian sighs. “Listen, your recent test scores indicate extremely high potential to lead in stressful situations. I know you weren’t really trained for the field – ”
> 
> “I was trained to be an analyst and a paper pusher,” Gerard interrupts. “And my file isn’t exactly what you would call impressive.”
> 
> “Yes, I know. Eight reprimands in two years. But none of them are because of your work performance. You’re an excellent analyst – which is probably why you haven’t been fired yet – and you also have sharp instincts and make good decisions. To be fair, you’re a little emotionally stunted, but that’s not that big of an issue.”
> 
> “Uh. Thanks?” Gerard is still not convinced. “You barely know me. How would you know if I have sharp instincts or whatever?”
> 
> Brian points to the folder on his desk. “Apparently the test scores know better than I do.”
> 
> “Those things are bullshit. They can’t boil down someone’s personality into two-hundred questions.”
> 
> “I’m not saying they can. I’m saying we can estimate your reactions to most field situations based on the answers you gave, and that you’re an excellent match for our requirements,” Brian says in a tired voice. “Listen, I know we’ve only worked together a few times, but I’m just asking you to let me do my job. Hear me out.”
> 
> There’s unwavering eye contact between them for a moment. Gerard slumps in his chair and says, “Fine.”
> 
> Brian’s mouth twitches, and Gerard knows he’s flashing back to the ‘emotionally stunted’ comment. “Okay. Good. So what I’m going to do right now is lay out a plan for you. After this meeting, you’ll have three days to think about what I’ve said and then you’ll have to make a decision.”
> 
> Gerard stares at the nameplate that’s sitting at the edge of the desk, but he listens.
> 
> *

  
November 4 2004  
0130  
Prague, Czech Republic  
  
  
“Can you fix the fucking comm lines? Jesus Christ,” Gerard snipes. He’s already nervous as fuck and this isn’t really helping any. He digs a finger into his ear, as if jostling the tiny piece of plastic around will improve the reception, but all he gets is static blasting that much closer to his eardrum. Frank’s voice continues to come in spurts.   
  
Gerard is currently stuffed into a metal air-conditioning duct, head bent awkwardly and legs cramped up all to hell, with a malfunctioning comm line and an itch on his lower back that he can’t even shift enough to scratch. Life is hard.   
  
“Ray? Hello?” Gerard tries again, tapping at the stupid piece of shit in his ear. Fucking Brian, with his stupid budget meetings and his color-coded Excel spreadsheets. Fuck that guy.   
  
Mikey’s voice suddenly cuts through, loud and clear. “God, I feel like I’m going to hear you whining for the rest of my life.”  
  
“Finally.” Gerard wipes his finger on his shirt. He  _has_ been digging around in his ear for the past ten minutes, and he figures he should draw the line for personal hygiene somewhere.  
  
“And eternity,” Mikey continues, but his voice has taken on a slightly distracted quality, which means he’s staring at a computer screen and punching in a smattering of code onto his laptop. “I mean, I had a nice break for a while but now that we’re back to work, I feel like it’s going to be forever and a day, you know?”  
  
“You think you could work faster instead of, you know, talking to yourself?” Frank says in a good-naturedly mocking tone. Gerard imagines him curled up in the same duct, but on the opposite side of the wall and one floor down. It’d be a lot easier for him to fit, Gerard thinks.   
  
“You’re welcome, you bastards,” says Ray.   
  
“Fuck off,” Gerard mutters, because now that comm is up and running, Ray can pretty much sit back and chill, unless something goes wrong. This reminds him: “Hey, don’t eat all the leftovers, I want some of that burrito.”  
  
“Oh what, you mean this one?”  
  
Gerard can hear the crinkling of foil being peeled back. “Dude, I’m going to kill you.”  
  
“Elevators are frozen,” Mikey says before Ray has a chance to do anything but giggle, “sensor lights are off, and the security cameras are going down for thirty seconds in three…two…one – ”  
  
“Go,” Gerard finishes, and he can hear Frank moving at his word. Gerard slams his ankle down onto the paneling with the hinges on one side; it swings downward, opening up into a dark room.   
  
“Twenty-eight seconds,” Mikey says.   
  
Gerard’s already dropping into the room in one easy, fluid movement. The floor comes up way sooner than expected – Jesus, who works in here, hobbits? – and he stumbles a little, reaching out blindly and grabbing the edge of what feels like a desk.   
  
“I bet I can get outside before you,” Frank pants.   
  
“This isn’t a race, you turd,” Gerard scowls, but he immediately reaches up and switches on the thin flashlight that’s resting over the shell of his ear, swirling his hands around the mass of paper on the desk like he’s mixing cards. It’s kind of pointless though, since Frank is a fast motherfucker and has like, a sixth sense about locating things.   
  
“You’re almost thirty, Gerard. Maybe it’s time you phased ‘turd’ out of your vocabulary,” Ray suggests.   
  
Frank cackles just as Gerard’s fingers touch upon several waxy pages of blueprints. He doesn’t have a comeback, so he settles for bundling up the papers while muttering under his breath. It takes him some more time to grope around for the door. He’s finally kicking it open when Mikey says, “Nine seconds,” and then, “Ow, Bob, stop – ”   
  
There’s a punch of static, and Bob says, “Are you guys done yet or what?”  
  
“I’m out – now,” Frank says breathlessly.  
  
Gerard is still on the second floor. “Fuck,” he hisses. The stairs are going to take at least five seconds. He sees a window at the end of hallway and contemplates the sight, comparing it to the ticking digital clock in his head, and makes a quick decision to just go for it. It bobs closer and closer – he winces and jumps shoulder first before he can chicken out.   
  
There’s an explosion of shattering glass; his ears fill with the sound of raining crystal and a blast of cool air hits him at the same time. For a moment, things seem to be going in slow motion, his body hovering in the air, weightless, but then the lawn smashes into his face as he unceremoniously lands on the grass with a  _whump_ . Sure, he went through top level training at The Farm, but their curriculum never included teaching people how to fucking jump through windows, for Christ’s sake.   
  
“Gerard?” Mikey’s voice comes over the line again, sounding slightly worried.  
  
A pause, and then: “Oh – god,” Gerard croaks. His bones feel like they’re on fire. Apparently, diving out of a window is painful. He twitches his elbow but stops when it feels like it’s being sawed off.   
  
He decides to just lie there for a minute.  
  
The minute passes, and footsteps approach. When Gerard deems it safe to open his eyes, a pair of scuffed up black sneakers come into view.   
  
“Okay, so I’m sure that looked pretty fucking cool, but dude. Terrible decision.” The shoes shuffle back as Frank lowers himself onto his stomach. He pillows his chin on his forearms and smiles at Gerard like they’re at a sleepover or something and Gerard’s sleeping bag is made out of glass shards.   
  
(Bob’s voice comes over the line: “Hello?”)  
  
“Ran out of time. Would have seen me on security cameras,” Gerard coughs.   
  
“You hurled yourself through a window. I think it’s pretty safe to say that they’ll know someone broke in,” Frank grins. “And they’ll probably know that shit has been stolen, since people don’t just break in to break out.”  
  
(“Helloooo?” Ray sings.)  
  
Gerard frowns into the blades of grass that are scratching lightly at his face. “Thanks. Real reassuring. You should become a motivational speaker.”  
  
(“Dude, seriously. Hello?” Bob.)  
  
“Who the fuck turned off two-way comm?” Gerard groans.   
  
“I think it must have shorted out right after you jumped.”  
  
(“If you guys are dead, I think that’s really discourteous,” says Ray.)  
  
Gerard digs out his earpiece but keeps it fisted in his hand. It won’t do to leave any evidence. Any more evidence, that is. At least they didn’t get a picture of his face.  
  
“Think you can get up?” Frank asks after a few moments. He sits up and crouches by Gerard’s head, hands splayed over the grass for balance.  
  
“Hngh,” says Gerard.   
  
“You’re probably going to have to, since the alarm system is back online and I don’t think a broken window – ” and then Frank’s voice gets drowned out by a piercing wail.   
  
Gerard reluctantly shoves the earpiece into his pocket and holds out his hand, which Frank grabs. He brushes Gerard’s shoulders off once he’s standing and helps him limp toward the car.   
  
“Feels good to be back,” Frank says, giving Gerard’s waist a squeeze.   
  
“Yeah, it does,” Gerard admits as his ankle gives a worrisome crack. He takes a mental inventory: the blueprints are still crumpled in his sweaty palm, and Frank’s are sticking out of his back pants pocket with the edges inexplicably scorched. Two sets of broken comm units, two dented airducts, one broken window, and a fuck of a lot of muscle soreness that’ll probably triple by tomorrow morning.  
  
Whatever. Mission complete.   
  


*

  
November 5 2004  
1300  
New Jersey, USA  
  
  
“Paperwork,” Gerard announces. He makes his way down the line repeating, “Paperwork,” to Frank, Bob, Ray, and Mikey. All four of them groan in succession as soon as the thick manila folders hit their desks.   
  
“On our triumphant return mission? Come on, man,” Ray whines.   
  
“You’ve become way more of a tightass, Gerard,” Bob comments, leaning back in his chair so he can talk without his view being obstructed by Ray or his hair.   
  
“Well, yeah, I kind of had to, seeing as how we all almost got fired a few months ago,” Gerard says lightly.   
  
“Sure, boss.” Bob smiles and sits up again, but Gerard doesn’t miss the underlying bite of seriousness. Kind of like how no one was ever absolutely 100% kidding when they said ‘just kidding’.   
  
Gerard goes back into his office without bothering to stay long enough to make sure the paperwork is actually being filled out. He might be more of a tightass, but he can’t bring himself to be  _that_ guy,  _that_ – boss. (God, Gerard still really hates that word, even more so now that he has to act like one.) As long as he tells them what to do, he figures that the execution of said orders can’t really be his responsibility.   
  
Fluorescent lights overhead flicker down at him when he collapses into his chair and tilts his head back. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the blinking popup at the bottom of the computer screen, informing him of the new messages in his inbox.   
  
He sighs and sits forward, tugging the keyboard toward him. The first message is about keeping the breakroom clean. The second is from Brian, asking about their first mission back and reminding him to parcel out the paperwork and asking him to please keep their asses out of trouble. The third one is from Sean Carter, the head of their branch – The Head, as Gerard always thinks of him. The letters are bold and unchanging, but Gerard still examines each one carefully, just to make sure he’s reading them right.  
  
 _Way –  
  
As of last Friday, the investigation on your team has been concluded. Obviously, we’ve put your team back into rotation in the field, but all of them are on probation for six months. You’re on probation for a year.   
  
 I hope you learned something from all this.   
  
Yeah, like to come up with better lies when we’re being debriefed_ , Gerard wants to send back. He wonders what it says about him that this is his first instinct. The cursor actually hovers over the ‘reply’ button for a second, and he’s itching to click it.  
  
On paper, it was hard to pinpoint exactly what the investigation had been for. They had fudged together a whole bunch of reasons, citing everything from ‘arrests in twenty-two states’ to ‘an exceedingly large amount of financial damage’, but Gerard has a sneaking feeling that it was mostly to monitor his effectiveness as the leader of what probably looked like the most idiotic, reckless team the CIA had to offer.   
  
Gerard had best summed up his stance on Form 72B. The last question had been ‘Do you have anything to add in your defense that has not been covered in the questions above?’ with an empty answer space that covered a quarter of a page. Gerard had written, simply, ‘We get the job done’. A photocopy of the form had arrived in an interdepartmental envelope the next day with his answer circled in red, a bunch of arrows pointing to it, and ‘NOT A GOOD ANSWER’ scribbled underneath in Brian’s hasty handwriting. It was now lying underneath the clear glass plating that covered Gerard’s desk as a reminder to not become a tool but also to tone down the penchant for challenging higher-ups. If anything, it keeps him on the wagon every time he looks at it.  
  
The red marks stare up at him until he knocks the mouse to the side so that the cursor bumps down into the corner of the screen. On second thought, he forwards the message to the rest of the guys to let them know what’s going on. He’ll reply to The Head later, when he’s in the mood to pull the whole meek, apologetic act. For now, he’s going to lay his head on his desk and give in to the pressure building behind his eyes and to the lingering ache in his bones from jumping out that stupid goddamn window.  
  


*

  
“Coat,” is what Mikey says when Gerard opens the door at the end of the day. Half the lights are already out, which means everyone’s gone home.    
  
“Coat,” Frank echoes from the wall adjacent to the door, startlingly loud. Almost everyone, then. Gerard silently walks back to his desk and retrieves his coat from where it’s flung over the chairback.    
  
“Gloves?” Mikey asks as he’s shrugging it on.    
  
Gerard silently walks back to his desk and retrieves his gloves from where he’d stuffed them into the center drawer this morning.    
  
“Brain?” Frank quips when Gerard goes to walk out of his office for the third time.    
  
“Ha ha,” Gerard says dryly. He clicks the door shut and follows half a step behind Mikey, with Frank lagging last. His keycard takes a few swipes to work, but on the third try the bulletproof doors slide open with a whoosh of compressed air. Thumbprint scan, retinal ID, seven security digits, and they’re finally out of the center, waiting in the nondescript lobby for the elevator to arrive. Gerard finds it funny that the last door they exit through is just a regular wooden door, identical to all the rest that line both walls down the stretch of hallway. Their cover business is a small telemarketing company for a product that doesn’t actually exist. They still call people sometimes though, just to make it seem legit.     
  
“Any other news on Investi-gate?” Frank asks. The elevator dings open and they all step in. ‘Investi-gate’ had been born from ‘Investigation-gate’, which Frank had deemed too redundant.    
  
Gerard shrugs. “It’s officially over.” When he doesn’t add any more, Frank says, “Uh. That’s it?”   
  
“Yup.”    
  
“Huh. That’s anticlimactic.” Frank shoves his hands into his pockets and stares up at the illuminating floor numbers. Gerard glances at him sideways, then drops his gaze. He glances at him two more times before they even hit the next floor up.    
  
For some reason, it’s always been particularly hard with Frank to lay down the line between friend and boss. Or even coworker and non-coworker. But then if Gerard really wants to be honest with himself, he knows exactly why this is: he’s sort of been nursing a grade school-like crush on Frank for a while now. A crush that had reduced him to flustered words and stuttering hand movements in the beginning, but it’s boiled down to almost nothing out of the ordinary since then. Still, every once in a while, there will be random moments where it seems to overwhelm him out of nowhere and he’s blindsided with that warm, almost desperate sensation in his chest. Like when Frank does that thing where he rubs his chin and grins at the same time, or when he stands just a tiny bit too close for comfort.    
  
But it’s completely under control. Mostly Gerard just tries not to think about it. At all.   
  
He glances at Frank again, and then reflexively at Mikey, who’s staring right back at Gerard from the corner of his own eyes. Shit.   
  
Thankfully, they hit the ground floor and the elevator doors slide open before Gerard can sink completely into a pool of self-hatred. He thinks maybe he hears Mikey snort from behind him, but the sound is lost as he pushes the revolving door, encased in the glass space on his own before it releases him into the swell of street noises. The train is passing by, and Gerard listens to the rhythmic clacks as Frank and Mikey emerge from the building.    
  
“You know, you don’t have to wait around,” he tells Frank before he can think about how harsh that could sound.  He burrows deeper into his coat as if this will dispel his words and also because fuck, it’s getting cold.    
  
“Who says I’m staying late for you? Maybe I was having a deep conversation with Mikey and wanted to give him a ride home.” But Frank smiles good-naturedly, letting Gerard know that he didn’t take offense and also didn’t mean any either. “But hey, what would we do without a team leader, right? Someone’s gotta make sure you get your sleep.”   
  
He bumps Gerard’s shoulder with his own, even though he has to lift himself onto his toes to do it, and starts walking toward the parking structure. Mikey directs a series of complicated eyebrow quirks to Gerard, who pretends he has no idea what he means.    
  
“Mikes, you have the house keys, right?” Frank calls back at them while walking backward.    
  
Mikey nods, a single upward jerk of his chin. He waits until Frank is turned back around before withdrawing a hand from his coat pocket to squeeze Gerard’s elbow for a brief second. “Are you okay?”   
  
Gerard blinks at him. “I’m fine. Why?”   
  
“Nothing.” Mikey shrugs. “Just, that investigation. I know it’s been really stressful on you. How fucking long does it take to conduct one of those, anyway? It’s been like, three months.” He says it like they both don’t know it’s been exactly three months to the day.    
  
“Yeah, because the government’s known for being efficient, right?”    
  
Mikey smirks a little. “Careful, they probably wired this pathway all to hell.”   
  
“I wouldn’t doubt it.” Gerard hunches even further into his coat, content in the companionable silence that follows. They step into the yellow-lit parking garage, which is nearly empty save for two cars parked next to each other. Frank’s already standing by his – a beat up old hatchback that drunkenly lurches everywhere in sickening stop-start motions, but he calls it his baby and does things like lovingly rub his palm over the strips of masking tape that hold the sideview mirrors together.    
  
Mikey’s voice echoes off the cold concrete walls when he says, “Do you want to come hang out, celebrate the end of all this bullshit?”   
  
“The end of Investi-gate,” Frank adds.    
  
Both their tones are hyper-casual, made worse by the fact that they’re trying to cover it up. Gerard rolls his eyes. He’s not completely new to being sober.    
  
“I’m not going to run home and tear through a bottle of whiskey or anything. We’re off the hook – for now,” he adds, “and that’s that.”   
  
“Wasn’t saying anything otherwise,” Mikey says. He wedges his fingers underneath the frame of his glasses and rubs at his eye. “See you tomorrow, then?”   
  
“Good night.” Gerard pushes lightly at Mikey’s shoulder.    
  
“Bye,” Frank says, holding a hand up. Gerard reciprocates the action, then gets into his own beat up Subaru and turns on the ignition, waiting for the defroster to kick in. Frank peels out in reverse and honks a few times; when Gerard glances in his rearview mirror, he sees the car whiz by as both Mikey and Frank hold up their middle fingers in farewell. They’re gone before Gerard can even do anything but laugh to himself.    
  
The smile stays frozen on his face long after the lot is empty. He should be feeling relief about the end of the investigation, but all that’s piling up is dread. Dread about how to continually balance everything so that he doesn’t come off as a jackass to anyone, dread about walking on eggshells at work, dread about upcoming missions, dread about whether or not he can handle this anymore.    
  
Dread about fucking everything up, basically, except this time he doesn’t have the means to drown it out with a bottle of liquid and pills.   
  
He doesn’t feel like going back into an empty apartment. His phone is up to his ear and ringing before he can think about it.    
  
Bob answers with, “Today I got off work at six and I’m planning on keeping it that way.”    
  
Gerard huffs out a couple laughs, just to make sure he can still do it. “Yeah, we’re not on the clock so I guess I can tell you to fuck off without risking a report about workplace harassment.”   
  
He must sound more bitter than he thought, because Bob pauses, then just says, “You want to come over? I’m pretty sure Ray’s fat ass actually put aside some leftovers from dinner.”   
  
Gerard can hear Ray’s muffled protests in the background. He absently rubs the curve under his lower lip and stares out the windshield, at the skeletal trees that move stiffly with the wind.    
  
“That sounds good. Thanks.”    
  
“Okay. See you soon.”    
  
Bob hangs up. Gerard flips his phone shut a second later but keeps it in his hand, wiggling his thumbnail into the groove in the middle.    
  
“I have been sober three months today,” he says out loud. His voice sounds funny, both too loud and too compressed within the tiny interior of his car. When he cleaned up, he’d asked the guys not to make a huge celebration marking anniversaries and shit, but he still feels the need to acknowledge it, if only to his dashboard.   
  
The air coming out of the vents is starting to smell like fetid water. He laughs to himself again as he dials down the fan, then throws his phone onto the passenger seat and puts the car into reverse.    
  


*

 

> August 30, 2003  
>  1655  
>  New Jersey, USA
> 
>  
> 
> After a handful of minutes spent pacing around in the hallway, Gerard walks into Brian’s office without knocking. Brian, to his credit, only takes a second to put down a stack of papers and sit forward. 
> 
> Gerard settles into the same chair he sat in last time. “Say I took the job.” 
> 
> “O-kay,” Brian replies slowly, his mouth pausing around the ‘O’.
> 
> “No, just say I took it.” Gerard makes a rolling motion with his hand. 
> 
> Brian looks slightly confused, but he says, “Then, you would get a team. Three, maybe four agents.” He pauses to see if this answer is the one Gerard had been looking for, then continues more quickly when Gerard remains silent. “Like I said last time, you’d be placed in covert ops, and I’d be your handler. Training at The Farm would last six months – after that, you’d be field certified. You might stay on for another month, just to get specialty training in weapons and hand-to-hand. And that’s the short term plan.”
> 
> “Covert ops,” Gerard repeats. 
> 
> “Yes.” Brian sounds slightly sympathetic. He’d risen unusually quickly through the ranks, but maybe the agency hadn’t sucked all the life out of him yet. “Basically, and to put it bluntly, your team will be the only one who will be allowed to have knowledge of what you really do. They’re the ones you’ll rely on, the only ones you can trust. Them, and us, of course.”
> 
> “Will I be able to choose them?”
> 
> “They’ll be picked for you,” Brian answers with a slight wince. “But you’ll have a chance to evaluate each person and see if they’re a good match. If someone isn’t, then we’ll see what we can do.”
> 
> Gerard remains silent for a while, even though he’s spent the past three days sitting around in his boxers, smoking packs of cigarettes and not sleeping because his brain wouldn’t shut the fuck up. Brian lets it drag on, sitting calm and patient in his chair. 
> 
> Finally, Gerard makes to get up. “Let me know when you have a team assembled.” 
> 
> Brian smiles warmly. He seems more sure of himself, now that a decision has been made. “Will do.”
> 
> *

  
November 27 2004  
1615  
New Jersey, USA  
  
  
When Gerard picks up the phone and asks, “Hello?”, Brian says, “Hi, is the new issue of ‘Canned Peaches and Cream’ in yet?”  
  
“No, it isn’t. Sorry,” Gerard answers, his voice slightly higher than normal due to the laughter that’s crowding up in his throat. He hangs up and looks around for Mikey, but the only person in the store except for Gerard himself is Brendon, who’s currently sitting on the stool behind the counter while engrossed in an issue of  _Buffy_ .  
  
“Is this what I pay you for?” Gerard leans against one of the glass display cases and stares pointedly at Brendon, who looks up and smiles wide.   
  
“Yup.” He goes back to reading, but then holds the comic up a few seconds later. “Look, they draw her all weird. Like, super Lara Croft style,” he observes, tapping his finger against a panel and wiggling his eyebrows.   
  
“Today you’re an art critic,” states Gerard.  
  
“I think this comic is more about being aesthetically pleasing than mentally stimulating, you know?” Brendon grins and ducks away when Gerard tries to cuff him on the head. Even though Brendon pretty much slinks around and looks like he does nothing, Gerard likes him because he’s a nice kid who’s able to be around a lot – he goes to the local community college – and can generally be trusted with everything regarding the shop. For example, he’d actually ran after some shoplifters while chucking several limited edition  _Spawn_  action figures at their heads one time, which ended up causing more financial damage than what was stolen, but Gerard figures that it was the thought that counted.   
  
“So hey, I gotta head out,” Gerard tells him.   
  
Brendon sighs deeply in mock disappointment. “I swear dude, you’re never here. Is this what owning your own business is like? Because that’s my goal from now on.”  
  
“Owning your own business means you can choose when to come in and when to dump the rest of the hours on a  _Buffy_  fan.” Gerard grabs his jacket and walks around the counter, intending to go to the backroom to find Mikey and go meet Brian, but the front door jingles open and Mikey rushes in, which his weird because he mostly just lazes everywhere.   
  
“Hey, I was just looking for you,” Gerard says in surprise as Mikey grabs the sleeve of his shirt and pulls him close.   
  
“I’m dating someone,” Mikey hisses.  
  
Gerard reflexively makes a face. “Uh, cool? Why – ”  
  
“Hi!” A dark-haired, pretty girl rounds the corner and enters the store with a bright smile. “I’m Alicia.”  
  
“Oh! Hi.” Gerard shakes the proffered hand. “Nice to meet you,” he says to her, and says,  _you could have given me a little more than two fucking seconds of warning, and I hope you haven’t told her anything about us_  to Mikey by widening his eyes and glaring a little at the same time.   
  
Brendon pokes his hand into their little circle. “I’m Brendon.”  
  
While Alicia shakes Brendon’s hand, Gerard pointedly says to Mikey, “Hey, I need you to give me a ride to the mechanic. I have to pick up my car.”  
  
“Again?” Brendon asks, apparently overhearing. “Man, that’s like the tenth time this month.”  
  
“It’s a lemon, yup,” Gerard says in a fake jovial voice. “Plus, I like my oil changes to be on time.”  
  
Mikey looks to Alicia and then to Gerard and then back to Alicia. “Sorry, is that okay? I can meet you later for dinner like we planned.”   
  
“Sure, sure.” Alicia waves him off. “I work a few blocks from here, and we just ran into each other at the coffee shop down the street,” she explains to Brendon and Gerard. “Anyway, I convinced him to show me the store really quick.”  
  
Mikey briefly squeezes her wrist. “I’ll be right back, my keys are in the back room,” he announces before heading off, and Gerard would feel uncomfortable if it wasn’t for Brendon firing away some questions because small talk is what he was born for, apparently.   
  
“So where do you work?”  
  
Alicia’s mouth twists up into a vaguely embarrassed smile. “I work at that music shop downtown.”  
  
“Oh, cool. Do you teach there?” Brendon asks with what looks like genuine interest. Gerard tries to take mental notes.  
  
“Um, I actually fix guitars and stuff.” She shrugs it off, like someone who’s had a lot of experience with people fawning over her job. Gerard can’t help but be a paranoid asshole and get a little suspicious about who she’s really working for.   
  
Meanwhile, Brendon looks thrilled. “Whoa. That’s awesome,” he breathes.   
  
Gerard figures it’s time for some input. “Yeah, that is pretty cool. Do you play?” But before Alicia can answer, Mikey emerges from the back, swinging his keys around his finger.   
  
“Okay, let’s go,” he says. After a chorus of ‘nice to meet you’s and waves and a quick kiss between Mikey and Alicia while Brendon leers at Gerard, they finally separate.  
  
“Really?” Gerard asks as soon as they get into Mikey’s nondescript beige sedan. “ _Really_ ?”  
  
“It was a complete coincidence, dude. She asked to see the store and I couldn’t not show it to her because she could see the fucking store sign and the neon ‘OPEN’ marquee from the coffee shop.” Mikey peels out into the street without even bothering to check any mirrors and promptly zooms past a line of lawful drivers.   
  
Gerard effortlessly switches gears to the older sibling line of questioning. “How long have you been seeing her? Why didn’t you tell me?”  
  
“Only a couple weeks. And you know why I didn’t tell you yet.” Mikey makes a big circle with both hands – leaving the steering wheel completely unmanned – and Gerard assumes he’s referring in general to the not-so-warm reception that Alicia had gotten.   
  
“Yeah, okay,” Gerard grudgingly agrees.   
  
“You know I would have, if it lasts longer than this. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’d trust you with my life a hundred times over if we’re on assignment. But then you turn into kind of a freak the rest of the time,” Mikey says.   
  
“Hey, I love you too,” Gerard replies mildly.    
  
“I love you for who you are,” says Mikey in a reassuring tone. Gerard shoots him a look and sees that there’s a small smile playing at the edge of his mouth. On one hand, annoying brother who deserves a punch. On the other hand, Gerard is glad that he’s not being treated quite as delicately anymore. For a while there, it was as if everyone expected sober Gerard to immediately burst into tears at the slightest mention of a joke.   
  
A few minutes later, Mikey pulls into the big industrial parking lot, leaving their other lives behind. By the time they weave their way through the rows and rows of eighteen-wheelers and arrive at the right one, the rest of them are already there, swinging their legs from where they’re perched inside the truck.   
  
“Fucking laggers,” Frank says. He gently kicks his foot at Gerard’s shoulder; Gerard restrains himself from sneaking his hand under Frank’s pant leg and wrapping it around his bare ankle.   
  
“Happy truckin’?” he asks Brian instead, who’s sitting at the leftmost edge.   
  
Brian flicks the brim of his cap. “You know it.”  
  
“Scrambler’s on,” Ray announces.   
  
Brian immediately takes off his cap and throws it aside. “Get in.” He shifts into a squat and leans over the edge to help Gerard and Mikey up into the truck as the rest of the guys move further in. Once Brian pulls the doors shut, effectively blocking out any natural light, Gerard sees six ID pictures with accompanying profiles and several candid photographs up on the blank wall at the other end of the cargo hold. Brian hunches over the small table that’s shoved up against the front corner and taps through his laptop.  
  
“Right. This is a big one.”  
  
“When is it not a big one?” Mikey asks, in a way that’s more curious than challenging.   
  
“Big _ger_ ,” Brian amends.   
  
“Let’s let the man do his job,” Ray says diplomatically.   
  
Brian snorts. “Thanks, Ray. So, eight months ago, several pellets of plutonium were stolen from a facility in New Mexico.” Flash to close-up shots of suitcases with plutonium slotted neatly into columns, emanating an eerily orange glow. “Five of them were recovered, but we keep catching up to the remaining three a step too late. Wentz’s team were the last ones to try, and Hurley almost lost a leg during the mission.”  
  
Gerard sees Ray subconsciously flex his hands against the sides of his legs for a brief moment, as if to make sure they’re still there. Brian continues: “There haven’t been any more leads until a week ago, when we intercepted something about a sale from Argentina. Thing is, we think the actual pellets are somewhere along the Cambodian border.”  
  
“Wait. So,” Bob waves to the images on the wall, “those guys are selling something they don’t have?”  
  
“Basically,” Brian nods. “The people actually in possession are a group called ‘The Third Hand’.” He presses the spacebar and the projection switches to a simple emblem, a trio of hands tilted 120 degrees apart. “The hard part is that they’re underground as fuck. We don’t know what any of them look like, or even how many comprise the group, but there are several known cohorts that we’re keeping tabs on. But to get to  _them_ , we’re going to have to work backwards starting from the first guys, the buyers who want to sell.”  
  
Gerard tries not to sigh. He hates these wild goose chases, flying in zig-zags all around the world and skipping back and forth over the dateline until they’re almost out of their minds, still with pieces of various disguises hanging off them.   
  
“I hate doing things this way,” Frank mutters into his ear, his breath hot against Gerard’s skin. Gerard actually has to pull back a little so that Frank’s face doesn’t go all blurry when he looks at him with an empathetic smile.  
  
“ – supposed to be a safe deposit box in Sweden containing instructions. It’s probably already been accessed, but we’re hoping they were dumb enough to not get rid of everything in it,” Brian is saying when Gerard tunes back in. “The account still exists, in any case, which is a good sign. You’ll be briefed at 0900 tomorrow. I don’t have to tell you not to fuck it up, right?”  
  
“That pleading voice accomplishes nothing,” says Ray.   
  
“If I lose a leg, I’m blaming you, Schechter,” Bob threatens playfully as Brian shuts off his computer while Mikey and Ray struggle to shift the bolts and open the doors. They all hop out one by one, but Gerard remains inside, arms crossed over his chest and biting his lip as he watches Brian pack up his computer.  
  
 “Something wrong?” Brian asks when he notices Gerard still hanging around.   
  
The rest of the guys’ voices fade away. Gerard untucks one hand and scratches uncertainly behind his ear. He doesn’t really know what to say – he wants to say something, but he finds himself unable to articulate it at all.  
  
Surprisingly, Brian seems to understand. “It’ll take a while to settle back into things.”  
  
“Why did we even get the assignment?” Gerard asks suddenly, hoping to catch him off guard.  
  
Brian studies him. “Are you doubting yourself?” They have all said that Brian would make a great shrink, because he has an uncanny ability to answer questions with questions.  
  
“No,” Gerard replies, even though yeah, he kind of is. Jesus, after the past year, who wouldn’t? “I’m just wondering why they would give us this mission after three months of being inactive in the field. There are plenty of other teams around.” He does his fake-epiphany face. “Oh, yeah, and not to mention that we just spent the past three months being ostracized and having every single ink mark on our files examined.”  
  
“I honestly don’t know, Gerard.” Brian hefts his laptop bag onto his shoulder. “Maybe Carter sees past more of the bullshit than you think.”  
  
“Or maybe he wants us dead,” Gerard mutters. 

 

“Yeah, maybe that too.” Brian rolls his eyes a little and gently pushes Gerard toward the doors.

 

*

 

> September 5 2003  
>  1220  
>  New Jersey, USA
> 
>  
> 
> “Here.” Brian lays several dossiers over his desk, but Gerard’s only able to focus in on one. 
> 
> “Mikey?” he asks incredulously. “You’re putting Mikey in the – my – team?”
> 
> “Would it be detrimental to keep you close together? This one is actually your choice.” 
> 
> “No, no. Yeah,” Gerard says vaguely. He drags the dossier toward him, staring at Mikey’s unsmiling ID picture that’s squished into the top left corner. It gets covered up when Gerard closes the folder and puts it on top of his lap. “Who are the others?”
> 
> “Well, I think you know Frank Iero,” Brian says wryly, pushing the next file forward. Frank is also not smiling, but his chin is slightly lifted as if he’d been joking around with the photographer just a second before the picture had been taken. 
> 
> Gerard twitches the folder closer. “I don’t really know him that well – haven’t seen him around in a long time, actually.” 
> 
> He hasn’t heard anything either, which was a good sign around these parts. Brian confirms this by saying, “He’s been in deep cover. Sleeper. He’ll be back soon, though, and is already aware of the change.”
> 
> “Huh.” Frank’s eyes stare up at him. Some of the bullet points underneath the picture refer to him graduating out of The Farm unusually early, taking anger management classes, certification in capoeira and muay thai fighting styles. Gerard quickly shuts the folder and puts it on top of Mikey’s. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to have someone so experienced answer to me?”
> 
> “Iero’s been through six teams since he’s been with the agency. It’s time to try some more unorthodox arrangements.” Brian gives a small smile. “Anyway, this is Ray Toro. We snagged him from the signal intel sector – he’ll be in charge of all your communication lines, and he’s not too bad at tech development either. 
> 
> “And lastly, Robert Bryar. He’ll actually be in charge of tech. Bounced around a bit from Chicago to LA and back to Chicago. Former NSA. He’s got some field experience too, so if it’s anything you and Frank can’t handle, he can come along while Mikey and Ray support. He’s probably planted a bug the size of half a rice grain into something you own and listened in on at least one of your conversations.”
> 
> By the time Gerard has processed all this, Brian’s attempt at lightening the mood has fallen flat. “Sorry,” Gerard apologizes, holding all the files up. 
> 
> Brian waves him off. He slowly says, “I know you were a handler for some smaller projects, but it’s my first time on the job. So I guess we have that in common.”
> 
> “Yeah. Was it really that long ago that you had to come bail us out of jail?” 
> 
> “Looking back on it now, I figure it was good practice,” Brian snorts. “I have a feeling you guys are going to run me into the ground.”
> 
> *

 

December 2 2004   
1845

Traveling at a moment’s notice usually works out pretty well for all of them. Gerard and Mikey can leave the shop to Brendon, Frank works for a temp agency, Bob has an independent home surveillance service with this guy, Jesse, and Ray works at his brother’s restaurant, where he never remembers the daily specials and provides detailed, unflinchingly honest input on all the entrees, but is pretty much safe from ever being fired because family is family.

The flight to Sweden leaves in the early afternoon, and Gerard is tired enough that he drifts in and out of sleep as soon as the plane takes off until he finally wakes up and the world outside the windows is dark. Sleeping through a sunset always makes him disoriented – he tries to blink the feeling away, stretching his arms out until his palms touch the seat in front of him. Several joints crack in response, the sounds numerous and loud in the way they only seem to get during transcontinental flights. 

“You’ve been out for days,” Frank says from Gerard’s left. He has his head tilted slightly, one earphone in and one in his hand that’s hovering in mid-air. 

“I know.” Gerard grimaces against the dry, vacuum feeling in his throat. When Frank doesn’t reinsert his earphone, Gerard says, “You can go back to your movie.”

“Nah,” Frank shrugs, removing the other one and coiling them up in his hands. “I’ve already seen this movie three times.”

Gerard peers at the headrest in front of Frank. “ _March of the Penguins_ ? Really?”

“Shut it.” 

“Three times?”

“Drink cart.” Frank shoves Gerard’s elbow off the armrest and leans over his lap, as if the flight attendant won’t see him unless he’s practically in the aisle. Now Gerard has a view full of Frank’s head. The back of his collar is gaping open, almost touching Gerard’s nose, and he can’t help but notice that despite the processed, recycled air, Frank smells clean, just faint hints of soap and aftershave.

“She doesn’t have tunnel vision, and I’m pretty sure this isn’t a ghost row or anything,” Gerard says pointedly while sitting up straighter against the back of his seat. He would reach for the button that allows him to recline those measly few inches, but Frank’s torso is in the way. On Frank’s other side, Bob is slumped against the window with his mouth hanging open, dead to the world. 

“I’m just trying to decide. I need the menu in front of me to make an informed choice.” Frank continues to study the cart, which is squeaking forward at a hellishly slow rate. 

“Dude, you’re making me all claustrophobic. Even more so than I already was ever since getting into this metal tube,” Gerard finally tells him. 

“God, you’re such a baby.” But Frank moves away. Gerard lets out a quiet breath that’s masked by the whining of the plane engine. “Hey, get me a Coke, okay?” 

Frank neatly squeezes Gerard’s knee for a second, then leans down to retrieve his carry-on from underneath the seat, leaving Gerard free to study the movements of his shoulders as he digs through his bag to shove his headphones into a pocket. Had he always been this tactile? Was it just that Gerard had never really noticed? 

“Drinks, gentlemen?” The flight attendant smiles down at them as she guides the cart to a stop that’s marked by the clinking of glass. Gerard instinctively glances at the second row, the mini-bottles filled with whiskey, and it takes a conscious effort to look away but the urge to double-fist the liquor isn’t half as bad as he had been expecting. He feels Frank studying him. 

“Two Cokes, please,” Gerard finally requests. He passes on a can and a cup to Frank, who takes them silently. Gerard cracks his drink open, but he doesn’t hear a matching  _hiss-pop_  from Frank. “It’s fine,” he says without looking up from watching his hand pour liquid into the cup. “I’m okay.” 

“I know. I wasn’t worried.” Frank sounds genuinely sincere; Gerard knows him well enough to tell if it’s real or fake. Maybe he actually hadn’t been suspicious, then. 

He rubs his hand over Gerard’s hair, quick and messy, and then snaps the tab on his Coke. The rest of the flight passes in a blur of travel magazines, a sunrise somewhere along the way, and Frank’s knee bumping against his every time the plane jolts along the wind currents. 

They land in Stockholm around 6:00pm local time. The airport is brimming with bright lights and squeaky clean floors and Gerard squints as he makes his way through the terminal, trundling a mostly empty suitcase behind him. As he passes the duty-free stores, a man with an open newspaper in his hands catches his eye and nods almost imperceptibly. Everything’s a go, then. His mind snaps into gear, his body follows suit, and he quickens his pace. Frank and Bob are trailing behind him, and Mikey and Ray are further back, having been seated in the second to last row of the plane. 

Customs passes unusually fast. A cold cut of wind blows into Gerard’s face as soon as he steps outside, but he doesn’t have time to get grumpy about it because an old man wearing a ratty trenchcoat taps him on the arm and asks, “Excuse me, do you happen to have a spare quarter and dime?”

Gerard smiles ruefully. “Sorry, sir.” 

The old man nods and continues on down the sidewalk. Bob comes to a stop beside Gerard, dragging both his and Frank’s suitcases.

“Ready?”

“Yup.”

There is a line of cabs idling to the left, engines coughing grey and white puffs of smoke. Gerard searches out a dark blue one with ‘2510’ written on the side in white decals. He leads the way there and the three of them dump their bags into the trunk and pile into the backseat. 

The cabbie glances in the rearview mirror. “Good flight?”

“Long,” Frank says with a raspy voice. 

As their car pulls into the street, Gerard catches a glimpse of the old man stopping Mikey and Ray on the sidewalk. Gerard says, “Don’t you think it’d be better to ask for Swedish money?”

“There isn’t an equivalent for ’25’ in Krona,” the cabbie grins. “Anyway, your rooms have been swept. There’ll be a car waiting outside tomorrow morning. Here.” He grabs a box from the passenger seat and holds it over his shoulder until Bob reaches over and takes it. “Phones. Schechter is already in, he’ll get in touch soon.” 

“That guy really skates the line between handler and stalker,” Frank says as Bob passes out the phones. 

“At least he keeps us out of trouble. Or covers our asses for the trouble that you get us into,” Bob replies in a bored voice. Gerard can tell he doesn’t mind, though. Maybe he even relishes it a little, because he gets antsy when too many things are going right. 

Gerard stares at Stockholm as it passes in a smudge of buildings and people and hopes to god that Bob’ll be antsy for the rest of this mission.

*

 

December 4, 2004   
1120   
Stockholm, Sweden

 

“Southern oil kings,” Mikey says. 

“Southern oil kings,” Gerard repeats. “Southern oil king heirs?”

“Southern oil king heirs,” Mikey agrees. He pushes the knot of his tie up to his neck while staring at the mirror. 

 

*

  
“ – and it says that my dad – god rest his soul – had a safe deposit box here. Our cousins may have come and accessed it already, but we’re his sons and we have a right to it too,” Gerard drawls. He has no idea if he’s overdoing the accent or what. It doesn’t even matter, since the bank attendant probably only understands about a quarter of the words Gerard’s rattling off anyway. Spewing a lot of bullshit and making no sense will get you a long way in any country. 

“Okay. You want the manager?” the attendant responds hesitantly. 

Gerard flashes a smile. “Please, ma’am. Thank you.” 

She walks off, tottering on high heels. The moment she disappears around the corner, Mikey jumps over the counter, dress shoes squeaking against the marble top, and lands on the other side. He sticks a keycard into the computer and starts typing. 

“Are you in yet,” Gerard mutters. 

“I’m going to refrain from taking the opportunity for a ‘that’s what she said’ joke and just tell you that no, we’re not in yet,” says Ray through the earpiece. Frank is laughing somewhere in the background, a sound that always sticks in Gerard’s head. 

“Tell him to meet me halfway,” Mikey orders distractedly. 

“Mikey says to meet him halfway,” Gerard relays, indifferent to the fact that he has no idea what that means. He glances at his watch when there’s no confirmation of success from neither Ray nor Mikey. The attendant is going to be coming back any second now. “Hurry up,” he hisses, looking over both his shoulders. The place is like a mausoleum and he’d be able to hear anyone approaching due to the echo of footsteps, but still. 

“Hold on, Jesus.” Mikey’s fingers spider quickly over the keyboard, pressing letters and numbers at an impossibly quick pace. 

It’s times like these that Gerard wonders just how stupid he is not to have noticed Mikey’s computer exploits when they were younger. Things had become a lot more clear when Mikey had leaned up against Gerard’s doorframe, pushed up his glasses, and basically said something like, “You know how you think I’m just downloading unreleased Disney movies and selling illegal copies on Ebay? Yeah, well, I’m also hacking into the NASA network on my down time, ha ha ha.” The CIA had been thrilled to get a two-for-one deal on the Way brothers. 

“Date opened – date accessed – ” Mikey says under his breath. “Numbered accounts – okay – 6B2397,” he mutters to Gerard before ejecting the card and jumping back over. Gerard decides to help gravity out and pushes him completely down onto the floor when the clacking of high heels starts up again, giving him time to stash away the keycard while out of sight. 

“Everything all right?” the attendant asks as she nears, followed by a short man with graying hair and a round belly. 

Mikey gets up, dusting off his slacks. “Slipped,” he explains flatly. “I’ve got a bum leg.”

_Jesus Christ_ , Gerard thinks – Mikey never learns to stop throwing out random facts about his cover that are impossible to remember, but the man beams.

“Mr. James, I am Erik Lind.” He holds out a hand. “Pleasure.”

“You betcha,” Mikey replies with a smile that Gerard’s never seen him bestow upon a stranger before. They shake, and Mikey gestures toward Gerard with an open palm and says, “My brother, Arthur.” 

“Ah. The James brothers, follow me, please.” Mr. Lind leads the way through a narrow hallway at the end of the foyer, pausing briefly to swipe his keycard through the pad and thumb in a quick code – 7214, and Gerard commits it to memory as a precaution – before opening a door to the left, this one made of thick, impenetrable silver. 

The room is air-conditioned to just this side of chilly, and each wall consists of columns and columns of thin rectangles that compose one end of countless safety deposit boxes. Gerard tries to figure out how it all works without looking around too much. Everything is a smooth, glossy black, and there aren’t any keyholes that he can see. 

Mr. Lind asks, “And your box number is?” 

“6B2397,” Gerard answers.

There’s another keypad on the wall adjacent to the door, which Mr. Lind swipes through and types in the box number. “If you could just enter the password,” he says, turning it slightly so that the screen faces them. 

“Of course.” Mikey steps forward and pokes at the keys hesitantly with his index finger, as if the keyboard is unfamiliar because he usually has a team of lackeys type for him. 000523907244. Thank god for his penchant for numbers and his childhood mission of memorizing all digits of pi. 

One of the rectangles pops out with a hiss and Mr. Lind smiles, like he’s just as relieved as they are that the code wasn’t wrong. He removes it from the wall and hands it to Mikey before excusing himself for the allotted ten minutes. As soon as the door thumps shut, Mikey drops the box onto the metal table that stretches through the middle of the room and Gerard pries the cover off. Inside there’s an empty gun holster and a single sheet of paper folded into thirds. 

“We flew to Sweden for this?” Mikey holds it up in the air where it hangs limply from the creases. 

**_12/17/2004  
Atlanta – Peachtree and Lennox  
Bert McCracken _ **

“It’s something,” Gerard says grimly. “Eyes only, right?” He memorizes the information, makes Mikey memorize it too, and they exit the bank as quickly as possible, waving and yelling goodbye and generally sounding like cheesy Western movie characters. They hop into their rent-a-limo sitting outside, illegally parked on the curb, and head back to the hotel. 

“McCracken’s got a file,” Brian says later, after Gerard tells him about the note. He presses the scroll button on his mouse. “Looks like he’s got a history of dealing with unsavory people.”

“Unsavory people, who the hell says that,” Bob says with a grin. “Hey, unsavory people, you guys.”

Brian doesn’t look up from his computer. “Shut the fuck up, Bryar, Jesus.”

But Bob keeps repeating it, and Ray catches on, and soon they’re all calling each other unsavory people until Brian finally shouts over the din. “Fuck, you guys! Go down to the lounge or something, you’re pissing me off.”

“Oh, come on, Brian,” Frank starts, but Brian cuts him off.

“Seriously. I have to take a call with Carter soon and I don’t want you around for that all like,” and Brian pulls a dumb face that’s presumably supposed to stand for eavesdropping on a conversation, “listening in and shit.” 

It takes Gerard a moment to realize that everyone is deferring the decision to him – because he’s the designated ‘leader’ or because they’re wondering if he can handle being around people who are drinking, he doesn’t know. In any case, a twinge of annoyance flares up but he shrugs it off. “Okay okay, we’re going,” he says, and follows Mikey, Bob, and Ray out of the room. 

“Yeah, we’re going to hang out with unsavory people,” Frank stresses. He barely makes it out before something heavy thunks against the door. 

The lounge is fairly packed for it still being early in the evening. Businessmen, tourists, and some locals are sitting around chatting, holding glasses that reflect the low light. Lots of modern décor, thin lamps that splay out like pond reeds, some tacky glass sculptures that make Gerard grimace on instinct. Somewhere, in some other life, he’s probably a sneering art critic or an interior decorator. 

“It’s cool,” Gerard says before anyone can ask. “Go, get drinks, whatever.” But before Mikey can get out of range, Gerard grabs his shirt sleeve and says, slightly embarrassed, “Get me a cranberry juice, okay?”

“Sure,” Mikey shrugs, and Gerard appreciates him not smiling indulgently or anything like that. 

He settles down into a booth as the rest of the guys start filing back with glasses in their hands. It’s only when Gerard starts sipping his juice that he sees Frank isn’t there. A scan over the bar and he catches sight of the familiar dark hair – Frank is chatting up a leggy blonde, and he actually looks over as if he can feel Gerard staring. Or maybe not, because now he’s pointing them out to the girl and they’re making their way over. 

“Hey,” Frank says when he reaches the booth, one hand splayed over her shoulderblades. “This is Maja.”

They say hello, and really, this isn’t surprising considering that Frank can sweet-talk his way into or out of anything and anyone. He slides onto the seat next to Mikey, and Maja follows. There are introductions all around, and then Gerard sort of fades into the background pretty literally, slumping against his seat as he watches the rest of them. He would like to think that they’re all mingling and just having a good time, but aside from the conversation – Ray spouts some story about a guys’ week away, “Europe, crazy, yeah!” – he can see the tightness in Frank’s shoulders and the faraway glaze that comes over Bob’s eyes every once in a while; it’s not easy to close the door on the dayjob, despite the fact that they’d gotten what they had come here for. 

“So, Maja, what do you do for a living?” Frank smiles, managing to make this question charming instead of boring.

“I’m a police officer,” she tells him. 

“No shit!” Frank looks delighted. Everyone else makes appropriate noises of awe. “Do you know 26 ways to kill me?”

“27, actually,” she jokes. 

They all laugh at that, Gerard included, even though the reawakened jealous part of his brain thinks, whatever. He totally knows 34 ways to kill someone.

As the night goes on, he keeps finding himself snapping his eyes away from Frank without ever remembering when he started looking in the first place. It’s stupid, and he doesn’t know why all this shit keeps plaguing his mind more than ever these days, given that he’s known Frank for years now. Maybe it’s because when he met Frank, he’d been mostly drunk and perpetually recovering from the night before. 

By the time he finishes his drink, the lounge is packed with people as dozens of voices clash with each other, creating a low level buzz of noise. Every once in a while, there’s a sharp burst of laughter and Gerard is more relaxed than he thought he could get in this place. 

“Hey.” Frank is half-standing, reaching across the table with a hand curled around Gerard’s empty glass. “Refill?”

“Sure.” Gerard watches Frank and Maja make their way back to the bar. Maja says something and Frank throws his head back to laugh before they’re both swallowed up by the crowd. 

Like this job being the closest he could get to his childhood daydreams of being a superhero, saving people and fighting villains, this was the closest that he could get to Frank. Frank, with his casual touches and smiles that came so effortlessly, with his hot temper and fierce loyalty to Gerard and all the other guys; Frank, who had stuck by and been a stubborn fuck when Gerard had been at his worst. In any other case, all of it would have been more than Gerard ever expected out of anyone, but in this case – Gerard allows himself to finish the thought before he berates himself for being all maudlin and self-pitying – it stops just short of being enough. 

 

*

> July 27 2004  
> 1000  
> New Jersey, USA
> 
>  
> 
> Frank’s the first one to look up. He does so sharply, from under his eyelashes so as not to make it noticeable. Gerard can feel Bob glance at him too, and Ray after that, but Mikey just stays engrossed in coding something into his computer. 
> 
> Gerard barely makes it into his office before the spins overtake him and he collapses onto the sofa with his eyes closed. The door opens and shuts again immediately, and a hand settles over his forehead. 
> 
> “Hey.”
> 
> “Hm,” Gerard mumbles. 
> 
> “You shouldn’t have come in today.”
> 
> When Gerard cracks his eyes open, Frank is kneeling by the couch and gazing at him. He’s wearing a rumpled short-sleeved Oxford with a crooked black tie. On the days they’re actually in the office, Frank likes to look the part. Gerard smiles and feels his lips crack with the movement. 
> 
> “You look like you have to be in court.”
> 
> Frank doesn’t even bother to acknowledge the weak joke. “I’m serious. If Brian sees you like this – fuck, if The Head comes down and sees you like this, it’s not going to be pretty.”
> 
> “I have work to do.” Gerard motions in the general direction of his desk. Frank looks over his shoulder, like he’s expecting to see a mountain of folders with a flashing neon sign that says ‘WORK’ hanging over it. 
> 
> “Hey.” Gerard grabs Frank’s tie and forces him to turn back around. “So, I killed a bunch of people yesterday.” He shuts his eyes again.
> 
> Frank closes his other hand around Gerard’s. “I know,” he says softly. “So did I.”
> 
> It’s quiet. The next time the door opens, it’s Mikey’s voice that says, “I got it.” Gerard doesn’t know how he knows that Mikey is emphatically not looking at him. He opens his eyes just to check, and yeah, Mikey is definitely keeping his gaze fixed on Frank. 
> 
> “Are you sure?” Frank asks after a pause. He finally moves his hand off Gerard’s forehead. It takes a moment to acclimate to the absence of touch.
> 
> “Yeah. You should get started on the report from  _Operation: Landlock_.”
> 
> “Right.” Frank squeezes Gerard’s hand just a bit, then gets up, knees cracking quietly, and closes the door behind him. 
> 
> In comparison to Frank being uncharacteristically soft, Mikey is being uncharacteristically cold. He keeps his position at the foot of the couch, hands shoved into his pockets, and doesn’t say anything. 
> 
> “I’m going to be okay,” Gerard says, resting a forearm over his eyes. 
> 
> “I didn’t ask,” Mikey shoots back. “Fuck. What’s going to happen if you get tanked before a mission? Or  _during_  a mission?”
> 
> Gerard is stung. He moves his arm and pushes himself up; the room spins a little, but he makes it. “I wouldn’t do that.” 
> 
> “Yeah, well, it doesn’t seem like that much of an impossibility at this point.” 
> 
> “Mikey,” and that’s as far as Gerard gets. He can’t think of anything to reassure Mikey with. Shit, he can’t even think of anything to defend himself. “I’m sorry,” he mutters. 
> 
> Mikey doesn’t reply, but he moves the trashcan from beside Gerard’s desk to the couch before he leaves the office. 
> 
> *

  


December 17, 2004  
0230  
Atlanta, USA

For the past four hours, Gerard has watched Bert McCracken walk around shirtless while rubbing his belly, conduct five phone conversations, take a piss with the door open, order room service three times, smoke a roach, take a shit with the door open, and set up a queue of porn so that it continuously plays in the background. 

As far as surveillance jobs go, this pretty much ranks up there as one of the worst. 

His ass is starting to hurt from sitting on the carpet all night, but it’s not like they have the motivation for moving the bed over to the sliding door to be only slightly more comfortable. The comm pieces shorted out again an hour ago, so now it’s actually just Frank and Gerard in a hotel room together keeping tabs on McCracken, who’s occupying a room on the same level at the hotel across the street. Mikey is stationed seven floors down in the lobby while Bob and Ray sit in a van in front of McCracken’s hotel. It feels strange not to have scuffling noises sounding in his ear, no Ray telling them about some super germ shit he saw on Dateline, no Bob on their asses to hurry up even though there’s nowhere to go, no Mikey complaining about their ineptitude. Just him and Frank sitting side by side, equipment sprawled all around them. 

Gerard presses the binoculars more firmly against his eyes until they start to feel dry and dusty. He gives in, lowering the binoculars with a sigh and looking over to his left, where Frank is sitting cross-legged, concentrating on building a tower of miniature shampoo bottles. 

“That’s conducive,” Gerard says, and Frank glances up indignantly, but his expression morphs into a laugh. 

“What?” 

“You dork.” Frank reaches out and traces his thumb over Gerard’s cheekbones. Gerard realizes that there are probably circles imprinted into his face from the binoculars. 

Gerard swooshes a hand over the shampoo city but doesn’t actually knock it over. “Get back to work.”

“Okay, okay, Harry Potter.” Frank smiles goofily. Gerard rolls his eyes, but then quickly rubs his face with both palms when Frank lays down on his stomach and crawls forward a little to peer through the telescope. 

“Anything new?”

Frank doesn’t answer. 

“Frank.”

There’s a strangled sort of noise and Gerard realizes that it came from Frank, who now has both hands wrapped around the telescope, elbows digging into the ornate carpet. Gerard scoots up beside him and presses the binoculars to his eyes once again, leaning forward until the lenses hit the sliding door and he can feel the cool air ghosting through from outside. 

Then he gets a magnified eyeful of boob. 

“Wow,” Gerard says before he can stop himself. Apparently Bert is now getting lucky – way  _way_ lucky, the kind of lucky that comes with a hefty price tag. He doesn’t know what keeps him watching as the chick –  _woman_ , he corrects himself – throws her trenchcoat on the floor – Jesus, he didn’t know that actually happened in real life – and walks around provocatively in nothing but lingerie and black heels. Maybe it’s just programmed in, that former basement dwellers are destined to bloom into voyeurs.

“Dude, she’s hot,” Frank mumbles. Gerard peeks over and notices that Frank is practically choking his telescope. 

He licks his lips and looks through the binoculars again, letting the curl of jealousy pass. 

The woman is now lying on the bed, sitting up at an angle with her weight resting on her forearms. One leg is bent up onto the mattress while the other hangs off. The heels are still on. 

“Dirty Bertie looks mad excited for some action,” Frank sings. “Oh god, I bet he was totally in one of your D&D rival groups back in the day.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Gerard watches as they kiss. The guy immediately starts fumbling for the bra. 

“Jesus, going in for the bra after two seconds of kissing? What the hell.” Frank sounds offended, as if he’s the one wearing the bra.

“I wasn’t aware there was some sort of time limit.” 

Frank snorts. “Of course there’s a time limit. Have some manners, man. Work a girl up a little.”

“Well, it’s too late now.” The bra is off. Gerard absently scratches his hip with one hand. He doesn’t know what the fuck’s gotten into him, but he can’t stop watching. “This is so wrong.”

“They’re the ones who left the blinds wide open,” Frank points out. “Plus, this is our assignment. To watch this guy.”

Gerard insists, “Still. It’s voyeuristic as hell. We might as well be pressed up against their windows and mouth-breathing on the glass.”

“Nothing wrong with a little entertainment while on the job.” Frank sounds distracted. 

Both of them fall silent as they continue watching. Gerard feels so fucking creepy, but his hands are glued to the binoculars, which are glued to the window, and – and. He doesn’t even know anymore. Her bottoms come off, but there’s only a flash of skin before both she and Bert are under the bedcovers. 

“Her shoes are still on,” Frank croaks. Gerard hears him shift his hips a little against the carpet. Oh, fuck. 

A sudden flare of nervousness and disgust comes over him. Finally. He jerks the binoculars away and tosses them onto the bed. “This is fucked up,” he mutters, rising from the floor with tingly legs and walking to the other side of the room to rifle through the duffel bags that are lining the wall, just so he has something to do with his hands. It’s like there’s a phantom itch somewhere on him – he’s on edge, wary. 

When he’s made a sufficient mess of things, he turns around and sees that Frank is no longer looking out the window, either. Instead, he’s lying on his back, arms pillowed behind his head as he watches Gerard.

“What,” Gerard asks flatly. 

Frank chews the corner of his lip. It’s already shiny and a bit red. So are his cheeks. “Nothing. I – we didn’t actually see anything that bad, you know.”

“We were watching people get intimate,” Gerard grits out. “That’s a complete invasion of privacy, I don’t care who that guy is.”

Frank pauses, then pushes himself up into sitting position. His hair is rumpled in the back and he’s still twitching his mouth a little as his hands play absently with the short bristles of carpet. He clears his throat. 

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” Gerard sighs. “Don’t apologize. I just.” He runs his hands over his face. This is all fucking weird for some reason. He just wants to get into the shower and scrub at his skin until the feeling goes away. 

Frank’s voice is startlingly close when he says, “Hey.” Gerard hadn’t even noticed him getting up and walking over. “You okay?”

Gerard looks at Frank, who’s studying him with heavy-lidded eyes and that red mouth. Frank’s gaze flickers down to Gerard’s own mouth, where it stays for a really fucking long time. 

Still, he is absolutely unprepared for Frank closing the distance between them with one sock-clad foot and kissing him. 

Gerard makes this weird noise at the contact, and then it’s all hot breath and fingers wrapped around his wrists, and it feels good, it feels fucking good; it’s what Gerard has wanted to do ever since this pint-sized kid from field division handed him a cup of coffee in the breakroom on his first morning on the job, then showed him how to hotwire a car the same night. Ever since he joined their team and saved their asses on the very first mission together; ever since he flipped off his protective facemask after they were safely outside of the killzone and grinned at Gerard, sweaty and breathless. 

But since Gerard can’t ever turn his fucking brain off, he starts thinking about reasons –  _why is he doing this, why me, why now_  – and then the situation surrounding them, and he slowly dawns on the fact that Frank probably wants to hump the nearest thing on two legs only because of that indecent show going on across the street. This unceremonious realization dumps him back into reality, stomping over the elation that was just gaining footing. Having Frank touch him like this now feels cheap, trite, and a flood of anger rises up in his chest. 

“Fuck – ” The word is muffled against Frank’s lips. Gerard pushes him away, hard. “Frank, what the  _fuck_.”

Frank has stumbled away, is half-sitting above the bed with one hand braced on it for support. He pushes himself back up, pressing the back of his other hand against the curve of his chin. “Chill out,” is all he says, which only serves to make Gerard angrier, even though it doesn’t actually prove that his theory was right.

“Fuck you,” Gerard spits before he can stop himself, and Frank’s eyes flash dark, eyebrows arching up dangerously. Something stirs low in Gerard’s belly. He wipes his mouth with the inside of his wrist. “Why did you do that?”

“Seriously, you need to chill out. It didn’t mean anything.” Frank’s voice is frosty and blunt. The last words cut deep. He also doesn’t answer Gerard’s question, and those two things are pretty much all Gerard needs to know. 

He wipes his mouth again, then turns to stalk into the bathroom, but Frank grabs his shoulder and whips him back around before he can even take a step.

“What exactly are you so pissed about?”

“Don’t fucking push it.” Gerard starts to turn away again but Frank yanks his arm.

“Tell me. Are you pissed that I kissed a guy? Or that I kissed you?” Frank smirks, but he’s tense around the shoulders and his hands twitch.

“What?” Gerard isn’t even paying attention to the questions – he’s too busy trying not to yell,  _I’m pissed that you’re trying to fucking use me_. He tries to avoid a direct answer and a direct punch to Frank’s face, and he can’t come up with anything better than, “I’m pissed about  _you_.”

“Oh yeah?”

That’s it. He’s done. “Yeah. Fuck you,” Gerard repeats. He usually hates verbal confrontation but this time he’s stepping forward a little as he talks, even as his heart pounds furiously. “I’m pissed about you dicking around. Everything’s always a huge fucking joke. You can’t take  _anything_  seriously.”

“Really, now.” Frank tilts his head to the side in mock interest, which only serves to drive Gerard further on.

Gerard adopts the same tone of voice. “Yes, really. We’re on a fucking stakeout and you can’t even keep it in your pants long enough to not jump someone on your team, but I don’t really think it comes as a surprise, since you’re the most reckless out of all of us. How about next time you fucking think before you act?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Frank muses, getting into the swing of things. “If we’re going for broad insults now, I think being reckless is better than feeding that fucking Messiah complex of yours. You’re actually not that noble, sorry to say. It’s kind of sad to watch, actually.”

“Fuck off,” Gerard snaps automatically. “You’re unprofessional. You almost just watched people have sex and then tried to use me as your own personal blow up doll. No thanks.” 

Frank sneers. “Way to be overdramatic,  _boss_. It was a girl in her underwear trying not to look disgusted at a greasy asshole criminal. Don’t fucking flatter yourself, and don’t get all pissy just because watching them reminded you of the fact that you can’t ever fucking get laid by  _anyone_  – ”

“Shut up,” Gerard hisses, grabbing the collar of Frank’s shirt and twisting it, pressing his knuckles at the base of Frank’s throat as if to cut off the words before they start, because once Frank gets going, he’s relentless and tries to rip things apart from the inside out. 

“ – and you’re a fucking chickenshit when you’re not being a shitty team leader in the field. You can’t even talk to people without sounding like an idiot. That’s real sexy, real Casanova, Gerard. God, I don’t know how I didn’t manage to jump you before you were this much of a loser – ”

Gerard’s arm swings out before he knows it, but Frank didn’t crash his way through The Farm for nothing. He ducks, wrenching out of Gerard’s grip, and rolls along the side of the bed before crouching down and kicking at Gerard’s knees while he’s off-balance from the attempted punch. Gerard manages to grab Frank’s foot and twist, but Frank drops to his shoulder and uses his other foot to make contact this time. 

Pain explodes from Gerard’s kneecaps as his legs knock together awkwardly. He goes down, hands slapping at the nightstand and knocking it over on the way. The lamp sputters and dies, leaving them in half-darkness. Gerard blindly pushes out the heel of his wrist when he feels Frank try to get on top of him. There’s a grunt as he connects and the weight disappears, but a split second later, a fist slams into the side of his face and Gerard yells, “Ow, shit.”

With the lights out and both of them on the floor, otherwise incapacitated, the fistfight turns into a brawl. “Stop it! Stop, motherfucker – fuck –  ” Frank yells, even as each of them takes a turn straddling the other while throwing punches at soft spots. Frank actually manages to kick Gerard into the wall – capoeira move, Gerard thinks dazedly – making his vision flash bright as the back of his neck practically cracks the molding, but he gets in a pretty good headbutt when Frank tries to haul him upward. 

Then Gerard curses at the top of his lungs when Frank starts playing dirty and grabs a chunk of his hair; he bites at Frank’s wrist in retaliation, practically gnawing on bone. They roll around more and manage to knock over the standing halogen lamp on the other side of the room. It falls resignedly to the carpet, sparking in bright flashes that light up Frank’s face in several frames; the hair hanging over his eyes, the blood-covered upper lip and the swell of his right cheekbone. 

Gerard finally manages to pin Frank by kneeing him in the stomach, shoving him onto his back, and restraining his limbs at the weak joints, but it takes all of Gerard’s strength to keep him down since apparently Frank can thrash around like a fish on land. 

“God, would you fucking calm  _down_?” he shouts with both hands clamped over Frank’s forearms. Frank doesn’t listen, and Gerard risks letting go for a split second to give him a nice, open-handed slap, hard enough so that Frank’s head whips sharply to the side upon contact. 

Maybe the loudness of the noise surprises both of them, because he finally stills and slowly turns his head back to center while staring at Gerard with narrowed eyes. Gerard stares back unblinkingly, barely even noticing that he’s out of breath, like he’s just sprinted a lap. Now that no one’s destroying furniture or throwing punches, an eerie silence settles over the room. The only noises Gerard can hear are two sets of heavy breaths and his own heartbeat pounding at a heightened but steady pace. 

Then he realizes, wait, that’s Frank’s  _dick_  pressing against his inner thigh. 

“Whoa, what.” Gerard immediately lets go and scrambles back, off Frank’s legs. Frank definitely hadn’t been hard before Gerard had thrown the first punch, or maybe he just hadn’t noticed – 

All the anger boiling in his muscles has suddenly disappeared without resolution, leaving him feeling numb and a little displaced. The fact that Frank also abruptly doesn’t look pissed off anymore is proof enough that Gerard wasn’t just imagining it. 

Of course, it had to be because of all the adrenaline. And stuff. 

Right. 

Frank is still looking at him challengingly, and Gerard can’t bring himself to break eye contact or the silence. He would only be able to speak with a vocabulary consisting entirely of the letter ‘H’, anyway.

At last, Frank sits up. No one says anything. 

Then Gerard finds himself asking, “Frank?” in an impossibly quiet voice. He has no idea what’s going on anymore, or what this is about.

“Yeah?” Frank says after a beat, with no pretense. Just the word, with a slight raise of his chin. Despite all evidence to the contrary, one of Frank’s strengths was that he remained levelheaded and logical when the shit hit the fan. Gerard usually appreciates this quality, but right now, it’s freaking him the fuck out that he’s the only one visibly freaking out.

Then there’s a beeping noise and the door bangs open, letting in an arc of light that makes Gerard squint and raise a hand to his forehead. The bubble of suspense in the room immediately deflates with this intrusion, easy as anything. 

“Dude, what are you guys doing in the dark?” Mikey flicks on the hallway light. Gerard squeezes his eyes completely shut as the world explodes with brightness. When he opens them again, Mikey is gaping at him. 

“Holy  _shit!_ ” he splutters. He looks around the room and Gerard takes the cue to do so too. 

It’s a fucking mess, of course. The duffels are sagged over onto their sides, zippered mouths open and spilling out equipment everywhere. There are wood splinters covering the carpet, two cracked lamps, broken pieces of pink porcelain reflecting circles of light, and strands of his hair littered over a spot by the bed. Even the carpet looks disheveled, with some spots smushed flat and others rubbed up at the wrong angle, giving the illusion of being several different shades of the same color.

Then there’s Frank: he looks at Frank’s shoe, follow the line of his shin up to his knee, skips decidedly over his hips and goes to his shoulder instead, and then finally looks at his face, but Frank’s looking up at Mikey with a vaguely chagrined expression. 

“What the fuck happened? Jesus, look at you two. Who was it? Did you see their faces?” Mikey backtracks and looks down both sides of the hallway. 

Gerard glances at Frank. He rubs his chin and grimaces when he realizes that Frank had left several scratches there. “Uh, Mikes,” he tries. Mikey comes back into the room at the sound of his voice. “No one came in. Or broke in.”

Mikey frowns. 

“We had a little…” 

“Disagreement,” Frank finishes. It’s his first word in a while; Gerard surprises himself by being glad to hear his voice. 

“A disagreement,” Mikey repeats. “A disagreement. Are you fucking kidding me? This place looks like it got torn apart by bears.”

Frank wipes his nose on his sleeve. A trail of blood gets left behind on the white cotton. He looks pretty beat up. Gerard instinctively closes his hand into a fist and back open again, feeling the stiffness in his knuckles. 

“It got a little out of hand,” Frank says casually, as if he isn’t bleeding from three separate spots on his face. 

Gerard decides to back him up with a, “Yeah,” that trails off. He probably looks ridiculous, too, with a cheekbone that feels like it got shot with a syringe full of Novocaine and the way he has to talk carefully with minimal movement, like a fucking ventriloquist.

Mikey stares at him. Somehow, Gerard doesn’t think anyone else can quite pull off such an expression of angry cluelessness as well as Mikey can. He tries to imagine what Mikey’s seeing at this moment, and then his mind starts playing back some of the things that Frank had said to him. What he remembers of the argument doesn’t make any sense – fuck, the whole thing probably didn’t make any sense, because they’re both known for shouting bullshit just for the sake of shouting – but a few key words echo around his mind.  _Shitty leader. Loser_. The kiss is just a hazy memory compared to everything else. A fresh wave of fury comes up over him. 

“Yeah,” Gerard says again, more sarcastically. “Frank was being a fucking asshole.”

This time, a flash of regret appears on Frank’s face. He stares down at his lap, pushing down the cuticles of his fingernails. 

“Um.” Mikey sounds uncertain now. “If you guys really were fighting, you know we have to file a report about it.”

“I know.”

“I just came up to tell you that McCracken’s on the move. I managed to brush past in the lobby and stick a transmitter on him. Bob and Ray are tailing.” 

“Right,” is all Gerard says. He manages to get up without falling over, which is a miracle considering he thinks he needs a wheelchair because of his fucked up knees – thanks to Frank – and almost walks into the bathroom before realizing he doesn’t want to see how bad he looks. 

He walks out of the room instead, down the hallway, limping a little and looking for something he can kick. Embarrassment, guilt, confusion, anger, stupidity, and all kinds of other bad moods clump together and settle like a lead weight inside him. Fuck. Fuck, Frank had  _kissed_ him. And then verbally cut him down in a harsh, efficient way. And then nearly scratched out his eyes. All while getting aroused by it, apparently. 

But wait – he realizes that once he attributes the glaring inconsistencies to the hooker across the street, it all makes sense. The time frame might be a little skewed, but it’s convincing enough as an explanation. Why he hadn’t thought of it when it was actually happening, he didn’t know. Maybe then he wouldn’t have frozen up like an idiot

Or maybe Frank had some sort of pain kink. Or – 

Shit, he has no clue. But what he’s sure about is the fact that their friendship is fucked. Given his being a field agent, Gerard has all kinds of worst-case scenarios in his head, some of which have actually taken place, but he never would have thought a routine surveillance assignment could be included in that repertoire. 

This was what he was always so afraid of about getting close to someone: if and when the time came to stab him in the back, they did it quickly and more painfully than anyone else ever could.

*

  
December 20, 2004  
0900  
New Jersey, USA  
  
  
“So they burst into the room – “  
  
“Wait, how did they get a keycard?” Brian’s forehead is wrinkling up.   
  
“I told you, they were bellhops. Probably had some connections at the front desk.”   
  
“How did they know what was in the bags?” Brian interrupts again.  
  
Frank shrugs. “I don’t know, man. That part’s a mystery.” He continues, “Anyway, they went straight for the equipment. Probably thought they could get a sweet deal for it.”  
  
“And neither of you, as trained CIA field agents, could take them,” Brian states skeptically.  
  
“We were – ”  
  
“ – sleeping,” Gerard finishes. “And they were quick. Sorry, Brian, but that was a boring assignment and if you actually expected us to stay up the entire night, I would lose respect for you as our handler because obviously you don’t know us very well.”  
  
Brian pinches the bridge of his nose. “And they didn’t leave any evidence?”  
  
“Just grabbed the bags and ran out,” Gerard shrugs.   
  
They, all four of them, had actually dropped most of the equipment off the hotel rooftop. After the debacle with Frank, there was something satisfying about watching thousand-dollar binoculars explode into tiny pieces as it hit the ground from twenty stories up. The idea had been Bob’s in the first place (he and Ray knew as much as Mikey did, which was almost nothing). Lie and destroy some stuff, it’ll be much easier to deal with than the consequences of an intra-team death match. Plus, you get to drop shit off a twenty-storey building.   
  
Whatever. Gerard was more willing to get reamed for something stupid like carelessness rather than acknowledge the tension between him and Frank. He’s pretty sure Frank feels the same way, because he’d been on board the minute Bob had suggested it.   
  
Brian sighs deeply and tugs at his tie. “I’m going to have to file a report about this, you know. There was state-of-the-art surveillance equipment in those bags. If someone else got a hold of it, then that’s a pretty big problem.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it, they didn’t take the really important stuff,” Frank blurts without thinking.   
  
“I thought they grabbed everything?” Brian asks suspiciously. Frank’s eyes bug out a little as he realizes what he said.   
  
“It was too dark in the room to assemble some of it, so I stashed a couple bags in the bathroom and they missed them,” Gerard invents. “Lucky break.”  
  
“What about this was lucky, exactly? You were the only two people in that entire hotel – fuck, in that entire fifty-mile radius with military-grade equipment and you got robbed and beat up for it.” Brian’s tie is now loosened so much that the Windsor knot is hanging somewhere around the middle of his chest. There are rhythmic clacking noises as he juggles those weird Chinese stress-reliever balls around in one hand. He’s already getting pretty good at it, especially considering that his little Zen sand garden had been thrown away only two weeks ago. Gerard hadn’t even known those things could get worn out enough to be thrown away, but the plastic sand rake had pretty much been reduced to a prong-less ‘T’ shape.  
  
“Seriously guys.” The clacking noises get louder and speed up. “There are only so many times I can put ‘collateral damage’ as an explanation when I have to fill out paperwork. And you’re still on probation, I didn’t think I’d have to remind you again.”  
  
“They can’t fault us for getting robbed,” Gerard protests. “What, were we supposed to run after them and shoot at some civvies?”  
  
“How do you know they were civvies? They fucking outsmarted you guys.”  
  
Gerard rolls his eyes. “Thanks for the backhanded compliment, but they were sloppy. Quick, but sloppy. It wasn’t professional.” Goddamn, Brian was poking holes all over the place. Lying to him was getting harder and harder to pull off. Gerard would have to think of some new tactics.   
  
“Trust me,” he stresses, and silently relaxes a tiny bit when Brian sighs.  
  
“A large part of me – like, 90% large – thinks you guys are lying, but I’m not really willing to go digging unless one of you is in danger.”  
  
“We’re not in danger,” Frank reassures him.   
  
Brian carefully puts down his stress balls in their velvet-lined case. “And you swear you’re not in trouble or doing something stupid that will jeopardize you or anyone in any way?” He starts to get that familiar pinched expression when Gerard and Frank actually take a moment to mull it over.   
  
“Yes, we swear,” Gerard finally says. “Brian. It’s fine. I’ll fill out the report if you want me to.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it. Just, get out of here before Sean sees you. Remember, you have a debriefing tomorrow morning.”   
  
Brian leans forward to light the aromatherapeutic candles that Mikey had gotten him last Christmas as Gerard and Frank silently exit the office. Frank starts splitting off from Gerard, but Gerard grabs his arm.   
  
“Listen, I need to talk to you.”   
  
“About what?”  
  
“About. That night.”  
  
Frank shakes off his grip. “Forget it.”  
  
“Jesus, Frank, I can’t even fucking ask you a question now?”  
  
“You made things pretty clear,” Frank bites out.   
  
“Well, that makes one of us,” Gerard hisses, “because I have no idea what the fuck happened or what’s going on. So can you please talk to me – ”  
  
Apparently not, because Frank is already walking away, taking quick, angry steps until he disappears around the corner. Gerard just watches him go.

 

*

 

> August 3, 2004  
> 1700  
> New Jersey, USA  
>   
>   
> “You do realize that the assignment called for little to no detection. That it was supposed to be a simple, silent job?” Carter is holding a stapled packet of papers in his hands. No one ventures to answer him. “I'll take that as a yes. Okay, so, simple, silent job, and yet you end up blowing up half of a prison, killing four guards, and causing a mass riot. Do I need to tell you what's wrong with that picture?”  
>   
> Beside Gerard, Bob shifts uncomfortably, which is a sign that things are really serious.  
>   
> Gerard blinks hard, staring at the glossed over wood grain of the tabletop. This was his fault, as were most things these days, to be fair. He'd been hungover, insisted he was fine, then gone ahead and tripped the alarm system by walking directly in the line of a security camera despite the fact that Mikey had mapped out exactly where to go in order to avoid being seen.  
>   
> Fuck, he's hungover _now_.  
>   
>  “I need to talk to Way alone for a minute,” Carter says with a tight smile. There's no confusion as to which Way he's referring to; everyone else gets up and exits the room with subdued steps. Gerard doesn't look up from the table, but he feels Frank glance back at him before the door closes.  
>   
> Carter opens some folders up, spreading them in a semicircle in front of him. “Aggravated assault,” he reads from one. He moves on to the others. “Assault and battery. Resisting arrest. Grand theft auto. Breaking and entering.” He looks up at Gerard. “Do you and your team realize that you're part of covert operations? Is that assuming too much?”  
>   
> “All of those took place off-duty,” Gerard tries lamely. “And they were removed from our records retroactively.”  
>   
> “Because the agency took care of them. Which brings us to another point I wanted to make today. You might notice that...” Carter focuses on the wall behind Gerard. “Look, I'll just put it bluntly. No one on your team has the cleanest of records with the agency. We made you team leader because we thought you’d be able to exert a certain amount of influence over them.”  
>   
> “My, uh, leadership tactics are sort of different from everyone else’s,” Gerard counters. He’s having trouble moving his tongue the way he wants.  
>   
> Someone to Gerard's left clears their throat. Gerard finally snaps his head up and sees Brian still sitting in his chair. “Sir, Gerard gets dragged into a lot of things because he’s outnumbered, pure and simple – ”  
>   
> “I don’t care,” Carter sits forward, “if he’s outnumbered. That is his  _job_ , to not let that get in the way of making decisions. I appreciate you sticking up for your asset, but this is out of your hands, Schechter.”  
>   
> “But does one assignment really merit this kind of – ”  
>   
> Carter grunts, “Trust me, this assignment is just the cherry topping on a shit sundae.” He looks back at Gerard, who’s been watching this interaction with wide eyes. “Agent Way, you’re one step away from getting stripped of your clearance and having your badge revoked. In other words, you’re one step away from having your ass fired.”  
>   
> “But - ”  
>   
> “Let me ask you a question. Do you  _want_  to get fired? Is this your passive-aggressive way of going about it?”  
>   
> “No,” Gerard says immediately. The word rings sharp, his first heated response during this entire meeting. “Sir, I apologize for whatever – ”  
>   
> “Your record is going on review,” Carter barks. “I don't have time to sit around and worry if one of my teams is following protocol. You think you're in danger, fine, tweak your plan. You've handled more than enough difficult assignments for me to know that you're capable of a lot. But for fuck's sake, you can't go around blowing things up whenever you feel like it. I've had to convince Langley multiple times that you, in fact, have  _not_  gone rogue, that this is just how your team's missions pan out sometimes.” He starts gathering up the folders again. “I don't keep tabs on anyone's personal life, but use this time to get yourself together. You and your team are officially off field duty until further notice.”  
>   
> “You're suspending us?” Gerard asks disbelievingly.   
>   
> “Suspension with pay. Consider yourselves lucky.”  
> 

  


*

  
January 3, 2005  
1200  
New Jersey, USA  
  
  
Strictly business. That’s been Gerard’s motto ever since Atlanta. It’s holding things together okay, save for the fact that everyone’s tiptoeing around each other like something will break. Gerard’s pretty much given up hope of ever hashing things out with Frank. The scratches on his chin are still scabbed over enough that he doesn’t really mind, but there’s the fact that they’re in the middle of one of the most important operations they’ve had as a team and everything fucking sucks.   
  
Mikey opens the door and pokes his head through. “We have a meeting in five minutes.”  
  
“I’ll be there.”  
  
Instead of leaving, Mikey steps all the way in and closes the door. “How’s the face?”  
  
“Healing.” Gerard rubs his chin, feeling the rough patches of the wounds.   
  
“Uh, this is gonna sound stupid, but.” Mikey crosses his arms. “Are you feeling okay?”  
  
“What do you want me to say? That I feel like I need a drink? Because maybe I do,” Gerard snaps.   
  
He’s met with silence. “Oh, god,” he groans, putting his face in his hands. “I’m sorry. That was, yeah. I didn’t mean it.”  
  
“Doesn’t matter if you mean it. You just don’t have to yell it like that,” Mikey shrugs, which makes Gerard feel even worse. “Meeting?”  
  
“Yeah.” Gerard rubs his eyes, then gets up from the desk. He’s pretty sure Mikey knows everything that’s going on, despite the fact that both he and Frank have been keeping mum. Mikey’s weird like that.   
  
When they get to the conference room, Ray, Bob, and Brian are already sitting around one side of the table. Surprisingly, The Head is up by the projector.   
  
“Way, get the lights,” he says. Mikey and Gerard both reach for the switch, but Mikey nudges Gerard toward the chair next to Brian. The lights shut off and the satellite image of a rundown building becomes illuminated on the screen.   
  
As Gerard and Mikey settle into their chairs, The Head starts talking. “The surveillance on Bert McCracken wasn’t a complete clusterfuck. Thanks to the audio bug by Bryar, we managed to record the meeting that McCracken had on the night of the 17th.”  
  
The door opens and closes again; Frank sneaks in and takes the chair next to Mikey. Gerard pretends he doesn’t notice and focuses so hard on the projection that his eyes start to get prickly.  
  
“Of course, they weren’t stupid enough to speak explicitly, but it was a relatively simple code and analysts extracted coordinates for this sunny little cottage in the desert.” Carter clicks a button on the remote in his hands and the screen changes to a topographical map. “A scan revealed high radioactivity, which makes it more than likely that The Third Hand are storing the plutonium pellets somewhere within the grounds. So, you know what this means.”  
  
“Field trip,” Frank mutters to Mikey, who smiles appreciatively.   
  
“When are we leaving?” Gerard asks.   
  
“The 11th.” Carter looks at him, eyes glimmering strangely in the dark. “Don’t fuck this up.”   
  
They all give silent, begrudging nods. Thankfully, Brian doesn’t say anything stupid, like, “They won’t.”   
  
“Any other questions?” Carter pauses, then says, “All right then, that’s all.” He walks toward the door, opening it as he flicks on the lights. “Oh, and.” He looks at their squinty faces. “I gave you this assignment for a reason.”  
  
When no one speaks, or perhaps because everyone looks confused, Carter rolls his eyes. “That was supposed to be motivation. An unspoken implication that despite your screw-ups, I believe that you are the best suited for this job. Jesus.”  
  
He walks out.   
  


*

  
January 11, 2005  
2345  
Mexico  
  
  
The compound is ten miles south of their temporary safehouse. Brian drops them off about a klick away from the fencing, deep in the dry brush that surrounds everything. Mikey immediately sets up his computer while Ray fits them up with comm gear and weapons.   
  
“I need to link up to the satellite before I can send you the building blueprints,” Mikey says, frowning as his computer boots up. “It should upload a bit after you get there.”  
  
“Right. Okay.” Gerard scratches his stomach, poking his fingers up under the lightweight Kevlar. “Ready?” he asks with barely a sideways glance at Frank, who nods without looking at Gerard.   
  
Mikey, Ray, and Bob are all busy with something or other. “See you guys,” Gerard says, because he can’t leave for a mission without some stupid parting words, and Mikey says, “Don’t blow yourself up or anything.”  
  
Gerard starts off through the brush, emerging on the other side in a relatively short time. The compound looms in the distance. “The front of the building faces north,” he calls softly to Frank, who’s a couple paces behind. “We should find a place to stop and regroup. Check things out.”  
  
“There.” Frank waves up ahead, where the ground slopes up a little before angling down towards the chain-link perimeter fence that has curls of barbed wire gracing the top. They crouch down and move smoothly until they can settle on their stomachs, using the position to scour the grounds.   
  
“I say we cut around to the back. Most of the security seems to be clustered in the front, on the first two floors.” Frank points as he talks, swooshing his hand around to illustrate his point. Gerard follows the invisible lines of his fingers and squints at the flickers of movement in the distance as shadowed bodies walk around.  
  
“I don't know,” he hedges. Something just seems off. It might be rash paranoia, but he can chalk it off to gut instinct and override any protocol they’re supposed to follow. Then again, he’ll probably get his ass handed to him by The Head if he does so.  
  
“You don’t know?” Frank echoes.   
  
There’s a crackling noise over comm. “I’m coming out there,” says Bob.   
  
Gerard rolls onto his back, away from Frank, and opens his mouth, but finds that he doesn’t want to argue. They kind of need Bob to save their asses. “Okay. We’re about fifty yards from the fence. Just keep going northwest.”  
  
Frank is looking at him skeptically. “What's not to know? Go around back, cut through the east wing of the building and exit south. Get in, get out.”  
  
“The blueprints should be on your handheld, Gee,” says Mikey's voice. Gerard lifts his hips and digs out his handheld from his pocket, then rolls back onto his stomach to shove it into Frank's line of sight.  
  
“Look.” He traces his finger over the bird's eye view of hallways and rooms. “We'll probably run into major problems here, here, and here. It's too stupid for them to concentrate all their men in the front, and I don't think they'd do it.” Another squint into the distance, and then he says, “I think our intel was wrong.”  
  
“Our intel's never been wrong,” Frank insists.  
  
“I know, okay? But just, consider it for a second.”  
  
Frank makes an annoyed noise through his nose but he gazes at the building, tracking the men as they pass the open windows. After a few moments, he presses his finger against his ear. “Mikey? Ray? Can you confirm the intel again?”  
  
“Confirming,” Mikey says. The longer Gerard waits like this, lying low in the bushes with the hard, desert floor scratching against his chest, the more unsure he gets about this entire plan. By the time Ray says, “Yup. Twenty men with LMGs, most likely RPKs or Valmets, mostly concentrated North,” Gerard is positively against going in all gung-ho like Frank had suggested.  
  
“Fuck,” he murmurs. Indecision is the worst thing in the field, and it’s plaguing him right now. Thankfully, Frank doesn’t bug him about it but Gerard can still feel him waiting impatiently.    
  
“If you fuckers can't make a decision, what are the rest of us supposed to do?” Bob is squirming toward them in a military crawl, a forest green beanie tugged down almost over his eyebrows. “I called it in to Brian,” he says conversationally, grunting a little as he settles down on Gerard’s other side.   
  
“And?” Gerard prods.   
  
“He says The Head is pretty much watching every single move we make right now. If we deviate from protocol, we’re busted.”  
  
“Great. Awesome.” A flash of a headache cuts through right behind his eyes. Gerard closes them, knocks his forehead against the ground a couple times, and then says, “Ray? Can you patch me through to headquarters?”   
  
“Sure.”   
  
It’s silent for a few moments before Carter’s voice is booming into his ear: “What is it?”  
  
“Sir, I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.”  
  
“A bad feeling,” Carter repeats.  
  
Gerard speaks carefully. “I think they know we got a hold of the building layout, or maybe they leaked the information on purpose, or maybe they got wind of someone coming and changed up the configurations, but either way, I don’t think our intel is correct anymore.”  
  
All three of them are silent as Carter appears to mull this over. The uneasy feeling in Gerard’s gut actually fades a little, but comes back full force when Carter speaks.   
  
“Now is not the time for cold feet. We follow a protocol here. It doesn’t make you special not to do so, it makes you stupid.” He sighs, “Listen, Way, logistically? We have no reason to doubt the intel other than your blind hunch. It’s just not possible to switch everything up only based on that and that alone.”  
  
“So what you’re saying is that I can’t change the plan?” Gerard asks. He’s actually pretty proud of himself for dialing down the sarcasm almost all the way.   
  
Frank and Bob aren’t saying anything, but Gerard can tell they’re listening hard. Surprisingly, Carter doesn’t say anything either.   
  
“Understood,” Gerard finally replies.   
  
“Good.”  
  
There’s a click and some white noise. “He’s gone,” says Ray.   
  
“Fuck,” Gerard spits immediately. “Goddammit.”  
  
After a pause, Bob says, “Well, he sounded a little bit human there, at least.”  
  
“He’d probably get ripped a new one if he actually did give the go ahead for a reworking,” Mikey points out reasonably, but Gerard can hear the worry creeping in between his words.   
  
“Yeah, well, we all answer to someone,” Gerard grunts. Whatever. Now that they’re stuck in one direction with no wiggle room, they might as well go for it. He double checks for his guns – two on his waist, one around his ankle – and curses again under his breath.   
  
“Gerard,” Frank starts, and it’s the first time he’s said the name in weeks. “If this is serious, if you really think – ”  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” Gerard cuts in, but he looks at Frank to show that he’s not deliberately being a dick. It’s just that they have a job, and they need to do it. No use arguing. “You ready?”  
  
In response, Frank kisses the tips of his first two fingers before curling them back around his gun. Gerard directs the same question to Bob, who adjusts his beanie while nodding grimly.   
  
Gerard takes a few deep breaths. “All right, let’s get this over with.” He pulls himself up onto his knees and then runs low over the ground, feet skimming over dirt. His lungs start hurting after about ten yards. Sure, he’s got credits for jujitsu and sombo, but running is something he just never got on board with.   
  
By the time he reaches the fence, Frank and Bob are caught up to him. All three crouch down as Bob pulls out wirecutters from his pocket and snaps a hole in the links with deft twists of his hand. They crawl through one by one, and Gerard keeps his eyes on the building as he jogs toward it until he reaches the sheet metal door on the east corner.   
  
When Gerard nods, Bob steps forward and jimmies a spatula-like thing under the crack where the knob is connected to the actual door. It starts smoking before the metal seems to melt and the knob falls off, straight into Bob’s outstretched palm. He tosses it somewhere into the dark as the door gapes open without anything to hold it shut.  
  
“Go,” Gerard whispers, but he’s the first one in. The hallway comes at a right angle, outlining the square shape of the building and ending in a T-junction way down at both ends. It’s dank inside, with cinderblocks covered in green mold and bare yellowed lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling every few feet, the stereotypical sort of setting to keep nuclear-grade plutonium. What’s not expected is that it’s completely empty, void of people.   
  
Maybe Gerard was wrong and the intel was correct. Still, something isn’t sitting right. He darts forward and plasters himself against a part of the wall where light from the two nearest bulbs doesn’t quite meet. Frank starts to come in after him but Gerard waves him back out.   
  
Frank doesn’t move.   
  
Gerard makes the same motion, but sharper this time.  _Get the fuck back outside_.   
  
Frank still doesn’t move.   
  
Gerard practically carves the fucking air with his hand. With a hardened expression, Frank finally backs up until his heels kick up dirt.   
  
Nothing’s stirring. Gerard listens, his hearing trained for picking up the sounds of breathing, footsteps, the rustling of clothes, the cocking of a safety trigger. He slowly slides his way along the wall until the T-junction looms up ahead. The hallway recedes into shadow on both sides, so he’ll be going in blind either way.   
  
Then something clicks, so soft that it might be Gerard’s imagination, a trick of a hair cell firing false signals to his brain. He waits and doesn’t move a fucking muscle for at least a minute, then slowly looks back over his shoulder and finally allows himself to breathe normally at the sight of Frank and Bob silhouetted in the distance. Evidently they didn’t notice anything.  
  
A bead of sweat rolls over his temple. He makes several quick decisions at once: to swing into the open, to the left, standing instead of crouching because at least he’s wearing a bulletproof vest. Too bad he doesn’t have a Kevlar mask.   
  
He shifts his weight onto his left foot and turns into the other hallway.   
  
Several shots fire out at once, the noises bouncing around the enclosed space with nowhere to go; Gerard feels an awful pressure on his chest, Frank yells his name, and the last thing he sees is the butt of a semi-automatic swinging toward his forehead.  
  


*

  
Gerard wakes up when a torrent of water sloshes over his face. He gasps and writhes from side to side, trying to move away and get air, he needs some fucking  _air_ , but liquid keeps rushing at him. It finally ceases just as he's getting desperate and he's left coughing and wet and disoriented. Mostly relieved though, 'cause he's alive, it turns out.  Whether this is a good thing or not, he doesn't know yet.  
  
“You’re awake,” says an unfamiliar voice.  
  
The air filtering through his lungs has a distinctly unpleasant smell - it's this fact that makes him suddenly aware of his surroundings all at once, like a switch in his consciousness has been flipped and now he knows he's underground somewhere in a small room, that he's tied to a chair with cords of wire holding his wrists together, and that there's going to be a fuck of a bruise on his forehead come tomorrow.  
  
“It's true, I'm awake,” Gerard breathes with a half-smile. He cracks his eyes open and sees a single flickering bulb illuminating a small circle of the room. Whoever spoke before is standing outside its range, coated in shadows.  
  
“What’s your name?”  
  
Gerard wants to scoff at him. Instead, he blurts, “Gerard Way,” without even thinking about it. Oh, fuck. It’s only now that he notices the sore spot on his inner arm and the slow burn of sodium thiopental in his limbs. He focuses his breathing and tries to wake his fucking brain up by counting slowly and deliberately.  _One. Two._  
  
“And who do you work for, Gerard Way?”  
  
 _Five. Six. Seven._  
  
“Who do you work for?” the voice repeats.   
  
 _Ten_. “I work for a telemarketing company,” Gerard finally grunts, pulling himself out of the haze, but it’s like floating in the ocean and being in the clear for a few seconds before another wave crashes in and drags him under.   
  
The guy doesn’t seem that devastated at the short effects of the thiopental. “Stealing isn't very nice, you know.”   
  
There are stars blinking around the edges of Gerard's vision when he tries to seek out a view of a face. Concussion, probably. “Yeah, well. I must have had a lapse in judgment,” he replies. He struggles to keep control of his voice. “Maybe my priorities are mixed up, but I think possession of nuclear-grade plutonium is sort of higher in the list of not nice things.”   
  
“Hm.” Gerard hears the stranger smile. “I suppose that’s the difference between you and me, Mr. Way.”  
  
“Okay, that’s not fair. You know all this stuff about me and I haven’t even seen your face.”  
  
To his surprise, the person actually does step out from the shadows, but it’s to wheel a metal cart closer to Gerard’s side. “My name is Brian Warner, and you’re now the only living person to have seen a member of The Third Hand.”  
  
Brian Warner. Brian Warner. Gerard scrolls through all the mental dossiers he has stored away, but the name doesn’t ring any bells. Brian –  _his_  Brian – was right. These guys really were underground as fuck. Brian Warner has a long face and beady eyes, but his fingers are thin and adroit as he picks up various instruments from the cart and then puts them back down. Pliers, wrenches, teasing needles, scalpels, short metal tubes cut lengthwise into semicircles.   
  
 _Jesus._  
  
“See, this is the part where you question what I just said. You’re now the only  _living_  person to have seen a member of The Third Hand,” Warner says again.   
  
Gerard tilts his head to the side, indicating the cart. “I really hope that’s not what I think it is.” Fuck, he’s getting reckless. The agency had put him through training on how to withstand torture – keep your head, take it one step at a time, don’t panic until it’s time to panic. But it’s kind of hard to remember with all the cloudiness plaguing his head right now. He tries hard not to look at the needles.  
  
Warner smiles again. “Big hero, aren’t you? Sacrificing yourself for the good of everyone else.”  
  
And then Gerard remembers. His throat closes up before he can even think about whether or not to ask where Frank and Bob are. Fuck.  
  
“Where – ” Maybe Warner doesn’t know. Maybe Frank and Bob got out of there before the shit hit the fan. He doesn’t want to bring attention to it anyway, that there were more of them, so he shuts his mouth after the first word. Warner crooks his index finger and tucks it under Gerard’s chin, pushing it up.   
  
“That’s a pretty face, Way. Shame.”  
  
 _Clink_. Warner hefts a pair of pliers in his hand.   
  
“This is stupid,” Gerard announces. “You already know who I am and I’m guessing you know why I’m here, and you can’t torture me for information or anything because I came here – ”  
  
Warner backhands him with the pliers still in his grip so that metal cracks against bone. There’s an explosion of pain in his right eye, a flood of red static in his vision when he instinctively closes it. His head lolls to the side and it’s like his muscles have snapped, because he can’t raise it back up.  
  
“Oh, I’m just killing time,” Warner says loftily, as if nothing happened. He’s barely audible over the buzzing in Gerard’s ears. “Everything’s ready to go but you happened to drop by, and I figured, what kind of host would I be if I didn’t show any hospitality for guests?”   
  
And he delicately places one of the halved tubes right underneath Gerard’s thumbnail so that the edge pushes against the part where nail meets skin.   
  
This is new. Gerard thinks he can guess what’s going to happen; his heart starts pounding loudly and he tries not to hyperventilate, but he can’t help the clammy sweat that flares up from the back of his neck and spreads everywhere else. Fuck, he’s fucking scared. There’s nowhere to go, is the worst thing, as always – no fight or flight response to manifest, nowhere he can move his hands –   
  
Warner pushes in hard.   
  
“Fuck!” Gerard yells. “ _Fuck_! Fuck, Jesus, shit,” he babbles. He can feel a cool torrent of air meeting the newly exposed raw skin, nail sitting up at a right angle, blood pooling out slowly as curses keep tumbling out from between his lips. Warner hits him again when he doesn’t shut up – on the nose this time, and blood immediately begins to slide out and over his chin in rivulets.  
  
“That was fun!” Warner says brightly. “Here, have another.”  
  
Gerard clamps down on the inside of his cheek, tasting pennies, digging his teeth around to focus the pain and his attention elsewhere as Warner goes for his other thumb. His breathing is coming in quick gasps through his nose, in-out, in-out, in-out, but he still can’t help yelling when Warner shoves in another tube with no hesitation.   
  
There are fingers on his lower teeth before he can close his mouth again, holding his jaw down and open. This fucking guy doesn’t pull any punches. Gerard makes some guttural noises in his throat when Warner peers into his mouth and slowly reaches in with the pliers.   
  
“Oh, it’s not all bad, I bet,” he whispers. “Fighting for the greater good, improving the world one mission at a time. You have to tell yourself that situations like these are inevitable, that for all the successes you have, you need to have some failures. For all the times people barely escape, some need to die. It’s just the way things balance themselves out.”  
  
The pliers are squeezing pressure on Gerard’s bottom left molar. There’s a puddle of spit sitting underneath his tongue, drooling out through the corner of his mouth. He looks up at Warner with his good eye, blinking through the tears.   
  
“Shame,” Warner clucks again. He begins to twist his hand side to side, and oh, fuck, Gerard already misses the clean push of the tubes. His feet drum against the concrete flooring, panicked  _tap-tap-tap-tap_ s as his hands shake against the restraints. The pain is excruciating, he’s almost blind with it, and it just  _continues_ , fuck, how long can this go on without him passing out or just going crazy? He doesn’t even realize that the horrific screaming noise is coming from his own chest until he almost gags on a wave of blood and the sound chokes off into gargling coughs.   
  
Finally, there’s a  _pop_ , and Warner is holding a bloody tooth in the grip of the pliers.   
  
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Gerard chants thickly, barely even able to pronounce the consonants. He turns his head to the side and manages to scrape his tongue against his upper front teeth and spit out a glob of red saliva. The room is spinning in his vision, alternately getting darker and lighter.   
  
“Now comes the hard part,” Warner is saying. He sounds far away, as if through a fog. “I want to keep you conscious, but if you keep doing  _that_  – ” there’s another blow against Gerard’s temple, but he only feels the force and not the pain “ – I have to wake you up or kill you. I’m on a schedule here, Gerard, please try to cooperate.”   
  
Everything greys out as Gerard’s head snaps again, this time with a throbbing sensation in his injured eye. It’s swelling shut rapidly. He’s slipping under, he can feel it – he’s just waiting now, for that final bullet right between his eyes.   
  
But it doesn’t come. Instead, he hears the muffled sounds of gunshots and general uproar, several voices yelling as rounds go off into walls.   
  
Warner sighs. “It looks like our time has been cut short.” He produces a handgun from his pocket and steps back, out of Gerard’s sight. Gerard continues to stare at the ceiling. If Warner shoots, the bullet will cut through the underside of his chin and up through the back of his head. Everything is fucking hurting – maybe it’d be better if he just ended it now.  
  
The commotion suddenly becomes a lot louder and more distinct as the door gets kicked open with a clang. Just as Gerard manages to raise his head, his chair gets tipped over onto its back and he goes down, barely aware of what the fuck’s going on. More gunshots, more yelling, but this time it’s with very familiar voices.   
  
He’s beginning to give in to the waves of sleepiness that keep washing over him when someone lands on their knees, right by Gerard’s arm, and hovers above him. It’s difficult to make out the face through the slits that make up his eyes right now.   
  
“Gerard? Gerard?  _Shit_.” A shaking hand is pressed to his chest, another to the curve underneath his jawbone, presumably looking for a pulse. “Fucking answer me, you cock.”  
  
It’s hard to talk. The world keeps warbling, as if someone is turning the volume dial up and down. “Don’t – call me – cock,” Gerard finally mumbles.   
  
Frank makes a funny noise. “Jesus Christ.” He leans away to cut off the bindings on Gerard’s wrists, then carefully rolls him a bit sideways so that the chair can be slid away. Gerard’s legs flop onto the floor uselessly. “Can you talk to me again? Stay awake, okay? Gerard?” Frank scoots closer and, cradling the back of Gerard’s head, pulls him up so that he’s half-laying over Frank’s lap.   
  
Another voice – Bob? – comes from somewhere further away and Frank turns his head to fire off an answer. Gerard blearily peers up at Frank, at this unfamiliar angle of his neck and the stubble that’s growing in over his jaw.   
  
“We got a team in.” Frank is talking to him again, clenching his fingers in Gerard’s hair. “We pulled a fucking rescue mission for you, man, don’t fucking die on me.” There are slight splits in his words, weird little lilts and pauses.  
  
Gerard tries to roll his eyes and say,  _I'm not_  dying, but then he realizes that Frank is kind of crying.   
  
“Oh, hey – hey.” Gerard reaches clumsily and ends up hitting Frank on the cheekbone. A few tears jump ship onto his hand, saltwater mixing with blood.   
  
“Fuck,” Frank says roughly. He swipes at his face with the heel of his wrist.   
  
“Hey. Hey, come on.”   
  
Frank stares down at him, his eyes bright and red-rimmed. “Gerard. I swear to god, I’m going to – ”  
  
But Gerard never finds out what he’s going to do, because with the last of his energy, he rears up and kisses Frank on the mouth before the sentence is finished.   
  
Then he passes out

 

*

  
August 7, 2004  
1700  
New Jersey, USA  
  
  
Gerard’s throat feels like it’s been hacksawed open. He hears Frank flush the toilet; the water swirls around and down inches from his face.   
  
A hand massages the back of his neck. “Gerard. Do you want to stay here?”   
  
“No,” Gerard tries, but it barely even makes it past his lips. He lifts his head and croaks, “No,” again, putting one hand on the side of the tub and the other on the toilet seat as he struggles to get up. Frank wraps one arm around his middle, giving at least the semblance that Gerard is able to do this himself. Mostly Gerard just wants to turn around and bury his face in Frank’s neck, slump until he’s no longer holding up any of his stupid, nauseous, withdrawing body.   
  
It’s a slow walk to the bed, but they make it. Gerard crawls in between the blankets and rests his cheek against a cool spot on his pillow.   
  
“I’ll tell Bob to get you more water.”   
  
“Wait.” When Frank turns toward him, Gerard hesitantly asks, “Can you stay with me? Please.”  
  
“Fuck you, ‘please’,” Frank says easily. He smoothes out spot on the bed and sits cross-legged, knee barely touching Gerard’s side, then takes Gerard’s hand and holds it with both of his. “You’re going to be fine,” he murmurs, rubbing Gerard’s wrist.   
  
Gerard tries to say, I’m sorry I fucked it all up. Instead, he falls asleep to the rasp of skin and Frank’s palm moving over his pulse.

  
*

  
January 26, 2005  
1800  
New Jersey, USA  
  
  
“Ready?”  
  
Gerard has been sitting on the edge of his bed. He gets up and takes the jacket that Mikey’s offering him. “Thanks.”   
  
They have a silent argument with their eyes before Gerard finally gives up and sits in the wheelchair. Mikey rolls him out of the room, past the nurses’ station where he waves bye and they all coo back. Two sets of sliding doors later, they’re outside, both squinting in the bright light of the afternoon.   
  
“Fuck, it’s bright.”  
  
“Yeah, I know you would have preferred to stay in that room for the rest of your life, just because it doesn’t get any sun,” Mikey says.   
  
A van pulls up front of them just as Gerard is getting up from the chair. Brian emerges from the driver’s side with sunglasses and a big grin; the back door opens and Bob and Ray tumble out. Gerard waits until it’s obvious that Frank isn’t there, then half-heartedly holds his arms out for hugs. Bob practically squeezes his lungs flat, and even Brian’s grip seems stronger than usual.   
  
“Feeling okay?” Brian asks, breaking the slightly awkward silence.   
  
“Fine. I feel good, actually.” And he does. It’s not a morphine-induced good, because there’s still a slight ache in his thumbs and the pull of stitches over his temple, but the fact that he can feel it lets him know he’s going to be all right. “Where’s Frank?” he asks casually.   
  
“He was running a training op when we left,” Ray explains. “I’m sure you’ll see him later, though. So hey,” he says quickly, clapping a hand on Gerard’s shoulder, “you scared the shit out of us.”  
  
Gerard squints a smile at him. “I’m sure.”  
  
“I would have killed him,” Bob says in a low voice. He looks completely serious, and an overwhelming sense of gratitude comes over Gerard. He’d found out that it was Bob who had hauled Frank back to the brush when Gerard gotten caught that night, Bob who had kicked open the door, and Bob who had found the suitcases of plutonium piled up in the corner. Apparently, Warner had been planning on jetting off with them as soon as he killed Gerard. He was in custody now, as were the pellets.   
  
Gerard shakes his head. It was a fucking miracle that everything turned out okay, but he’s not going to question it. “Thanks. I would have – yeah, I probably would have died there if it wasn’t for you.”  
  
“Wentz’s team actually saved the day. Gave us enough manpower to go in,” Brian says. “Turns out that Carter sent them after he talked to you.”  
  
“Carter?” Gerard is speechless.   
  
Brian nods. “Weird, huh?” he snorts, which doesn’t really give away if he’s being sarcastic or not, but he starts loading Gerard’s shit into the van and everyone else starts regaling him with stories about the past few weeks, their debriefings, Brian almost getting an aneurysm, and as much as he’s glad to just see everyone’s faces, he can only focus on the fact that Frank isn’t there. So it was like that, then.   
  
Bob and Ray get into the van again as Mikey rolls the wheelchair back into the hospital lobby. When he returns, Gerard is watching the other three argue about whether or not to get something to eat.  
  
Mikey touches his elbow. “He visited everyday, you know.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“You know who,” Mikey sighs. “I just thought you should know. That he was here as much as I was. He blew off everything to do it.” He shrugs. “Must have taken him a lot of effort to not let you notice.”  
  
“Right. But he’s not here now,” Gerard says simply. He scratches the back of his neck and climbs into the passenger seat.  
  


*

  
They drop him off at his apartment. Gerard has a hell of a time convincing everyone that he’s going to be fine by himself, yes, he’s sure.   
  
“No, seriously, don’t get out of the car, Ray. Brian, don’t turn off the ignition,” Gerard insists. “And Mikey, get back in the car, come on. You guys already kept me in the hospital three days after they wanted to discharge me.”  
  
“That was all Bob,” Ray informs him.  
  
“You’re going to be okay?” Bob asks.   
  
“Yes. Yes. I just want to sleep. I’m fucking exhausted. I don’t need any of you around watching me sleep.”  
  
Still, everyone stays where they are, Ray with one foot hanging out the door, Brian with his fingers poised to turn the car key. They defer to Mikey this time.   
  
“Mikey,” Gerard says in his warning voice, but he can see that it hardly has an effect anymore. He tries not to smile at this.   
  
“I’m coming by tomorrow,” Mikey announces stiffly. “First thing in the morning. And I’m using my key.”  
  
“Fine.”  
  
“I hate you.”  
  
“Say hi to Alicia for me. And tell Brendon thanks for the multiple flower deliveries off the business credit card.” His cover story was that he’d gotten hit by a car. ‘Second time since I’ve known you,’ Brendon had written. ‘Look both ways, spacecase.’  
  
“You’re an asshole,” Mikey tells him. Gerard gives him a crooked smile as Mikey pulls him in for a hug. “Don’t ever do that again,” he says quietly.   
  
Gerard pats his back in response. He really does feel tired now, a weariness that’s settled deep into his bones. Mikey shoves Ray’s foot out of the way and climbs back inside the van. Brian mutters something about adding ‘chauffeur’ to his résumé as they finally pull into the street, leaving Gerard on the sidewalk.   
  
He takes the elevator up to his floor and fumbles with the key, but when he presses it to the lock, the door edges open the tiniest bit. Gerard frowns, leaning down to inspect it. He finds that it wasn’t latched all the way shut in the first place.   
  
Great. This is exactly what he needs.   
  
He splays his hand on the door and silently pushes it the rest of the way open, ready to reach for the gun that he hides in the false-bottomed shelf right next to the doorframe, only to find that the lights in the apartment are on and a very familiar head is poking up over the back of the couch.   
  
“Didn’t want to scare you,” Frank says without turning around.   
  
“You might want to try not breaking into my place, then.” Gerard’s heart is beating rabbit-quick in his chest, both in anticipation and relief. He figures it’ll take a while to stop being jumpy all the time.   
  
“Sorry for not coming with to pick you up.”  
  
“Yeah, well.” Gerard tugs his bag into the corner and then closes the door behind him as he forces himself to walk over to the couch.   
  
Frank stands up. He still has a comm piece in his ear and his hair is matted with sweat residue. He looks the same as he always has, and the familiarity is jarring. Gerard doesn’t know why he expected things to be different at all, but he had.   
  
A startled smile pulls at Frank’s mouth. He glances at Gerard’s stitches. “You look good,” he says in a low voice.   
  
“Ha.” It’s like Gerard’s standing with his feet buried under hard cement. He waits for Frank to move, to leave, to do something.   
  
“Look,” Frank finally begins.   
  
“Can this wait? I’m really tired.” The car ride had draining, with the blurring landscapes and unforgiving sun, and being back here makes Gerard feel even more like someone dumped a gallon of salt just behind his eyeballs.   
  
“Gerard, please.” Frank twists his hands together, then pulls them down to his sides once he realizes the nervous gesture. “I’m – I’m glad you’re back.”  
  
Gerard says, “Me too,” almost at the same time Frank rushes on with, “I know an apology is going to seem stupid and way too little too late – ”  
  
“Apology for what? You saved my life.”  
  
“It wasn’t me, Wentz’s team came in and – listen, you know what I’m talking about.”  
  
“Okay, so don’t apologize,” Gerard cuts in. He’s getting pissed off all over again, but also apprehensive because it looks like they’re finally going to dive right into a discussion of the whole ‘I kissed you and now I’m punching your face in and getting hard while doing so’ thing that had set off this chain reaction of shitstorms. “Do we really have to do this now?” he finally asks.   
  
“Yes,” Frank says, and adds, “Please.”  
  
“Okay,” Gerard says evenly.  
  
“Okay.” Frank takes a deep breath. “Tell me why you’re pissed. Not that I don’t know, but,” he says hurriedly, “I just want you to lay it all out.”  
  
“Seriously?”  
  
“Yeah, just. Can you.” Frank makes a tiny gesture.   
  
“You haven’t made an effort to talk to me for weeks, and you want to do this right now?”   
  
Frank remains silent, but his expression gets a lot steelier.   
  
“Fine,” says Gerard. “Fine. You – you,” he stutters, not even sure where to begin, “you’ve been a complete asshole. You won’t even look at me anymore, and oh, yeah, I guess that time when you tried to use me – ”  
  
“When did I try to use you?” Frank asks with an angry frown.   
  
“At the hotel! After watching McCracken try and worm his way in to that chick’s pants!” Gerard is starting to sound petulant and whiny. This is escalating kind of quickly.  
  
Frank looks sort of stunned for a while. Then his expression clears and his mouth drops open. “I wasn’t – fuck.”  
  
“Yeah. So.” Gerard feels himself turning red. This was not how it was supposed to go. “So. I don’t know what the hell – ”  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Gerard plows on, gaining steam. “ – all this has been about, but I’m seriously tired of it – ”  
  
“Gerard.”  
  
He’s definitely yelling now. “ – and everything is fucked up and I just got out of the fucking hospital after getting the shit beat out of me and I don’t know what the fuck you want from me or why you pulled all this shit in the first place – ”  
  
“Because I’m motherfuckin’ in love with you, you dumbshit!” Frank shouts so loudly that his voice cracks.  
  
“Fuck off! Fuck you!” Gerard yells back without even really hearing him. Just for the sake of responding, the childish instinct to not let Frank have the last word. It’s a default reaction, like an automatic voice-response system, and only after he says it do Frank’s words even begin to sink in. It takes another lifetime for him to understand and process it.  
  
Then he actually processes it.  
  
Gerard stares blankly at Frank, who looks like he can't quite understand what just happened either. He can’t believe this. He cannot fucking believe this. “That doesn’t even make any sense, shut up,” he says uneasily.  
  
But Frank doesn’t take it back. “Gerard! You’re so fucking stupid sometimes, Jesus Christ.” Then his face sort of crumples and he rubs his hands over his cheeks. “Shit, I’m sorry. You’re not stupid, I didn’t mean that. This has just been all I could think about for days. Weeks, months, years, however you want to count it.”  
  
Gerard gapes some more. Then he puts two and two together, in the only way he knows how. “I can’t believe you’d stoop that low,” he finally states.   
  
“What?” Frank looks confused but wary at the same time.   
  
“Listen,” Gerard wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Shit, this is hard. “If you don’t want to be on this team anymore, because of me or whatever, maybe something else, but probably me, then just say so. You don’t have to lie about it.”  
  
Frank flinches. It’s the first time Gerard has seen it happen. “I wasn’t lying,” he says, surprisingly quiet. His voice is even, but he’s looking at some point next to Gerard’s left shoe as he talks. “I’m fucking,” he clears his throat and tries again, louder this time, “I’m fucking in love with you and you make it – you’ve been making it so hard for me to say that because – ”  
  
“Stop lying,” Gerard bites out.  
  
“ – because I knew you’d either accuse me of lying,” Frank continues even more loudly, “or you wouldn’t believe me, and I don’t know which is worse. I didn’t give a shit about you rejecting me, but the thought of those other two options – I mean, fuck. I don’t even know.”  
  
Gerard realizes that he’s slumped back against the wall. His legs feel like jelly. He can aim for someone’s jugular with a sniper rifle from 500 yards away, no problem, and yet here in his apartment, face to face with Frank, his knees are shaking to all hell.  
  
“Take it back,” he orders.   
  
“I’m not taking it back.”  
  
“Fuck.” Gerard laces his fingers together on top of his head and presses down, makes sure that his head’s on straight and he’s actually not dreaming all this, that he’s not actually still in that fucking room with Warner, getting chemicals shot into his brain or something. He laughs suddenly, dry and brittle. “Take it back. You don’t mean it.”  
  
“Stop telling me what to do. I’m not taking it back,” Frank repeats stubbornly. “Because it’s true. I mean it. Gerard. I know I could have chosen a better time – like, any time would have been a better time, but.” He laughs in the exact same way Gerard just did, desperate and a little hopeless. “Hasn’t it been sort of obvious?”  
  
And shit, it’s not like Gerard doesn’t want this. He wants to believe what Frank’s saying with every single part of his being, but Jesus, he doesn’t know if he’s ready to be that gullible guy who gets burned yet again; he doesn’t know if he’s ready to not be that guy who polishes off a bottle of whiskey like it’s water just because he can’t handle what he’s been given.   
  
“Gerard. Look at me.” Frank seems to know that if he stepped any closer, Gerard would take a swing at him. Instead, he stands his ground and firmly says, “Look at me. Hey.”  
  
Gerard finally glances up and meets Frank’s eyes. Frank, with his open face and no trace of teasing or sarcasm or any sort of smirk – just watching Gerard with a mild expression and eyes that are a tiny bit brighter than usual. Their whole lives are based on not trusting what they see, but Gerard wavers, feels the corner of his mouth tug downward.   
  
“Sometimes it seemed like you felt the same way, and that's why I – you remember when I kissed you, and,” Frank laughs a little, averting his gaze for a brief second, “and we kicked each other’s asses?”  
  
He pauses, and then takes Gerard’s silence as an answer. “Well. I guess it was the wrong place, wrong time, but. I never said that I didn’t mean it.”  
  
There’s a long pause.   
  
“So that’s what I have to say now,” Frank finishes softly, almost to himself.   
  
There’s another long pause.   
  
Gerard finally makes a decision.   
  
“I fucking hate you,” he snaps. “God, I fucking – ” He yanks at the wrists of his jacket, wincing through the residual muscle pain until he can shrug the whole thing off. It falls to the floor with a muffled sound of fabric. “Everyone always talks about how you say what’s on your mind and that one of the best things about you is you’re upfront about everything, and then you pull this shit. Fuck you, Frank.”   
  
Frank looks uncertain for the first time, eyes flickering down and up again. The muscles in his jaw twitch. “I’m sorry. If that’s how you feel, then maybe I was wrong,” he starts stiffly. Gerard cuts him off.  
  
“I feel like I cannot believe you’re fucking pulling this shit right now,” he says again. “Fuck. Take off your fucking comm piece.”  
  
“What?” Frank asks, confused. Gerard just waits silently until Frank reaches up and tugs out the tiny lump of plastic. He holds it with careful fingers and says, “What the hell – ”  
  
He cuts off as Gerard walks forward, crowding him against the wall, and stays silent as Gerard plucks the earpiece out of his hand and tosses it to the floor. They look at each other for a moment, Gerard with his head tilted slightly down to compensate for the height difference. Something about all this is telling him to remember it, to take it all in before they fall off the edge and everything changes. The closeness, the barest brush of his fingers against Frank’s hands, the way he can practically feel Frank thrumming with nervous energy.  
  
Then Gerard mumbles, “Oh, fuck it.” He can’t take it anymore.  
  
Frank blinks at the words. This is the last thing Gerard sees before he kisses Frank, nudging his mouth open with his tongue. Frank responds almost immediately, slumping back a little against the wall as he relaxes into it. He pulls Gerard with him, wrapping his arms around Gerard’s neck and practically climbing up his body as they kiss. Gerard never thought he’d be kissing anyone this fiercely, but here he is, holding a chunk of Frank’s hair to keep his face tilted up.  
  
Frank pauses, pulling away with his legs hooked around Gerard’s thighs. “Wait. This is for real, right?”  
  
Instead of answering, Gerard manages to stumble them both over to the couch. “You say I’m stupid and then you ask that?” Gerard slurs out, licking Frank’s neck tattoo as he skims his hands over Frank’s ribs, probably leaving superficial scratches because his thumbs are still bandaged up.   
  
“How about, we’re both fucking stupid,” Frank says breathlessly. He still has his legs wrapped around Gerard and he lifts his hips, heels digging into Gerard’s legs and pushing him down at the same time. They both groan a little and Gerard’s not gonna lie, he’d jerked off in the hospital bathroom two days ago, eyes shut tight while thinking about holding Frank down on a mattress and blowing him.   
  
“Fuck,” Gerard pants, every single part of him focused on this, this right now, with Frank under him, straining to rub against the right spots. He tries to snake his hands down and between them, but he gives up after several unsuccessful attempts. “Shit.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Gerard sits up, straddling Frank, and holds up his hands. “No thumbs. Can’t unbutton.”  
  
“Caveman talk. Okay.” Frank pops the button Gerard’s pants and pulls down the zipper.   
  
“Wait, no,” Gerard protests, and Frank says, “Shut the fuck up.”  
  
“But I want to – ”  
  
“Shut the fuck up, Gerard. You just got out of the hospital.”   
  
Gerard doesn’t know if that’s a viable reason or not, but he goes willingly when Frank pushes him down onto his back and tugs his pants and underwear down to around his knees.   
  
“Um,” Gerard says, but then Frank is holding his dick and mouthing around the head before going further down and everything gets wiped from Gerard’s mind. Everything is messy and hot and his head is starting to hurt again, but the pain only sharpens the edges of what’s happening, making Gerard even more turned on, and yeah, he can maybe see why Frank had gotten hard that night in the hotel room –   
  
Frank has pulled off a little but is sucking steadily, making all these obscene noises that has Gerard almost whimpering; he chokes out, “Frank,” and somehow Frank knows, because with one last push of his tongue, he hovers on his knees and one forearm over Gerard and kisses him sloppily, finishing him off with quick, efficient jerks of his other hand.   
  
It takes a while, but Gerard manages to come down a little. He kind of wants to stay like this forever, floating around in post-orgasm haze while feeling the warmth of Frank right above him.   
  
When he finally opens his eyes. Frank is looking at him with a tiny smile. “Last time I’m gonna ask this. This whole thing wasn’t a joke, right?” He’s still smiling, but Gerard can see the strain around his eyes.   
  
“I think I should be asking you that,” Gerard rasps. He stares back and doesn’t break eye contact; Frank leans down slowly, pauses, and then softly touches his mouth to Gerard’s in an unrecognizable kiss, measured and thorough, until he breaks off with a small sigh, pressing their foreheads together.   
  
“Also, I could have done with the grand declarations of love when I was on the brink of death,” Gerard murmurs against his lips.  
  
“I still feel fucking terrible,” Frank begins; Gerard says, “Yeah, me too. It’s not like you’re the only one at fault here.”  
  
“No, seriously.”  
  
“Me too, Frank. Really.”  
  
Frank kisses him again. “We’re the dumbest government agents out there.”  
  
“Not dumb, just emotionally stunted,” Gerard corrects. He pulls his pants back up as Frank fits himself into the narrow space between Gerard’s side and the back of the couch. “Just so you know, I'm probably going to freak out about this in about ten minutes.”  
  
“I kind of figured. But I’m guessing that you in general,” Frank pauses, “that you, you know. Are okay with this?”  
  
“Seriously the dumbest government agents out there.” Gerard tries to scratch between his stitches as he repeats Frank’s words back to him. He knows it's cheesy as fuck, but he can't help it. “Hasn’t it been sort of obvious? I’m motherfuckin’ in love with you, you dumbshit.”  
  
He echoes Frank’s smile.   
  


*

  
**EPILOGUE**  
  
  
October 7 2006  
2300  
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil  
  
  
“A laundry chute? Really?” Gerard peers down the steel tunnel, which is just a gaping mouth of black from all he can see.   
  
“If you’ve got a better way to avoid those masses of AKs in the halls, let me know.”   
  
“Fine,” Gerard sighs. He tucks his handgun into his pants and prepares to shove himself in, but Frank grabs him back by the belt and kisses him quick and just a little dirty.   
  
“Right behind you,” he says, then pushes him forward with a smile.   
  
Gerard swings his legs in, crosses his arms over his chest, and slides down.


End file.
